Floating tech incubator piques interest of more than 100 startups (Wired UK):
One of the problems with our immigration system is that we can't give enough visas to scientists and engineers that want to come here and work for US corporations and pay high taxes. Anyone who wants to come here illegally, however, is going to be able to get government support and funding and not pay 1% of the taxes one of those engineers we are keeping out would. Tech companies in Silicon Valley have been talking about putting a cruise ship just outside US waters so those engineers and scientists could work here via 'day passes'. Another group is considering building labs and offices on a former cruise ship so they would have access to the US for employees and material but not be hemmed in by government regulations.
There's a movement called 'seasteading' that thinks we could build communities out in international waters; think 'Waterworld' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. First adopters would be server farms and financial institutions and tech firms. If the cost was low enough, you'd see artist colonies and tourism (go to 'Freedonia' and do whatever drugs you want, fire automatic guns with chainsaw bayonets, get medical treatments that work but are only five years into the FDA's ten-year approval system). It would be safer than you'd think since they'd determine who could and couldn't join, what building standards were and could organize a self-defense and police force. There is an anti-aircraft platform outside the British waters that people have taken over and have sovereignty. 'Sealand' has server farms and some financial institutions that claim residence. It used to give out passports that the UK honored and was actually attacked by pirates trying to put their own people in power; the UK refused to help as 'Sealand' is out of their jurisdiction.
It has an appeal, the idea of a new land without lawyers or regulations or bureaucrats or politicians. I hope they make it.
'via Blog this'
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Gay Marriage, Obama and The Added Charm
There's a phrase I love but rarely use, 'with the added charm of being meaningless.' I heard it in an old Bogart movie; Bogart and his friend were paratroopers and his friend had a mysterious past. The friend ends up dead, Bogart is having a drink with the man he realizes is the killer and makes a toast, 'Geronimo.' The villain says it's a quaint toast with the added charm of being meaningless. I use it when I am strongly contemptuous of something or someone. I am going to use it today.
Obama (the dog eater) came out for gay marriage. Well, sort of. Not really. It's evolving. In 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire while running for state senator where he said he was in favor of gay marriage and would oppose laws banning it. Then he ran for president and suddenly he supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. For years, though, he's said his 'understanding' of the issue is 'evolving'. It gave him plausible deniability and allowed for him to appear friendly to gay donors and also religious voters. Now, though, he has stated he's for gay marriage. Which means he's going to press for the Defense of Marriage Act to be repealed by Congress, right?
No. But he's declared that he's going to order the attorney general to not defend it in lawsuits, right?
No. But he's going to require companies bidding for government contacts to provide benefits to same-sex couples, right?
No. But he's going to order Obamacare to give coverage to same-sex couples, right?
No. But he's going to use the threat of losing public funds to coerce the states to make gay marriage legal, right?
No. He said that he believes in states' rights and won't interfere with their banning of gay marriage. So he's doing nothing at all?
No. He's cashing the checks of gay donors that were refusing to donate unless he supported gay marriage. He was going to lose tens of millions of dollars otherwise.
So Obama's support of gay marriage has the added charm of being meaningless. It changes nothing. He can recognize same-sex relationships in the federal bureaucracy and the military without Congress. He can give those rights to hundreds of thousands of people and there'd be no way to stop him. He won't though.
Obama (the dog eater) came out for gay marriage. Well, sort of. Not really. It's evolving. In 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire while running for state senator where he said he was in favor of gay marriage and would oppose laws banning it. Then he ran for president and suddenly he supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. For years, though, he's said his 'understanding' of the issue is 'evolving'. It gave him plausible deniability and allowed for him to appear friendly to gay donors and also religious voters. Now, though, he has stated he's for gay marriage. Which means he's going to press for the Defense of Marriage Act to be repealed by Congress, right?
No. But he's declared that he's going to order the attorney general to not defend it in lawsuits, right?
No. But he's going to require companies bidding for government contacts to provide benefits to same-sex couples, right?
No. But he's going to order Obamacare to give coverage to same-sex couples, right?
No. But he's going to use the threat of losing public funds to coerce the states to make gay marriage legal, right?
No. He said that he believes in states' rights and won't interfere with their banning of gay marriage. So he's doing nothing at all?
No. He's cashing the checks of gay donors that were refusing to donate unless he supported gay marriage. He was going to lose tens of millions of dollars otherwise.
So Obama's support of gay marriage has the added charm of being meaningless. It changes nothing. He can recognize same-sex relationships in the federal bureaucracy and the military without Congress. He can give those rights to hundreds of thousands of people and there'd be no way to stop him. He won't though.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Forward To The PAST!
Obama looks to move 'forward' with comparisons to Bush's policies - The Hill's Ballot Box:
"The reelection campaign aimed to remind voters about the winning campaign in 2008."
That's all they got. Bush, who left office willingly on January 20, 2009, was not a good president. I think he's a good man and a kind man and did what he thought was right, but he was a bad president. But let me be clear, he was not Nixon. He was not filled with hate, did not punish his enemies with the force of the federal government and tried to work with the other side whenever possible. He doesn't deserve the vitriol he's gotten from this administration, the constant attacks and insults and slights. After four years out of office, the man should be forgiven his errors and the world should move on.
The problem is that Obama has nothing positive to campaign on. The economy is horrible, unemployment is terrible, inflation is rising and we are less respected internationally than when Bush was president. The public doesn't want Obamacare, doesn't want trillion dollars of new debt every year and doesn't want the government to constantly expand.
Yes, we killed Osama, but we used methods of interrogation Obama campaigned against at a facility Obama campaigned to close and a military Obama wants to shrink from bases in a country Obama was against invading. He still took sixteen hours to give the order and gave operational control to an admiral for the express purpose of insulating himself from blame if the operation failed. Was it a gutsy call for Hoover to go after Al Capone? Is it a gutsy call when the FBI goes after a serial killer?
He passed Obamacare which no one wanted and is unconstitutional to boot, he let the military kill Osama and...? His campaign slogan is 'Forward' but there's nothing forward-looking in his policies. New Deal control of the economy, Great Society entitlement expansion and...? We've got five trillion in debt and...?
Forward. I do not think this word means what you think this word means.
'via Blog this'
"The reelection campaign aimed to remind voters about the winning campaign in 2008."
That's all they got. Bush, who left office willingly on January 20, 2009, was not a good president. I think he's a good man and a kind man and did what he thought was right, but he was a bad president. But let me be clear, he was not Nixon. He was not filled with hate, did not punish his enemies with the force of the federal government and tried to work with the other side whenever possible. He doesn't deserve the vitriol he's gotten from this administration, the constant attacks and insults and slights. After four years out of office, the man should be forgiven his errors and the world should move on.
The problem is that Obama has nothing positive to campaign on. The economy is horrible, unemployment is terrible, inflation is rising and we are less respected internationally than when Bush was president. The public doesn't want Obamacare, doesn't want trillion dollars of new debt every year and doesn't want the government to constantly expand.
Yes, we killed Osama, but we used methods of interrogation Obama campaigned against at a facility Obama campaigned to close and a military Obama wants to shrink from bases in a country Obama was against invading. He still took sixteen hours to give the order and gave operational control to an admiral for the express purpose of insulating himself from blame if the operation failed. Was it a gutsy call for Hoover to go after Al Capone? Is it a gutsy call when the FBI goes after a serial killer?
He passed Obamacare which no one wanted and is unconstitutional to boot, he let the military kill Osama and...? His campaign slogan is 'Forward' but there's nothing forward-looking in his policies. New Deal control of the economy, Great Society entitlement expansion and...? We've got five trillion in debt and...?
Forward. I do not think this word means what you think this word means.
'via Blog this'
Saturday, May 5, 2012
No, really, they make it too easy. Obama 2012: Just Because
If Obama wins, what would he do in a second term? - The Washington Post:
"The president’s advisers are naturally reluctant to discuss what happens if their candidate wins in November. They don’t want to appear overconfident or undercut the messages of the campaign. None were willing to speak on the record."
Read that again. Obama's running for re-election. Nobody wants to talk about what he would do if he wins. It's a secret.
'via Blog this'
"The president’s advisers are naturally reluctant to discuss what happens if their candidate wins in November. They don’t want to appear overconfident or undercut the messages of the campaign. None were willing to speak on the record."
Read that again. Obama's running for re-election. Nobody wants to talk about what he would do if he wins. It's a secret.
'via Blog this'
More, Please!
Mitt Romney issues Ohio challenge to President Obama | cleveland.com:
One of Obama's greatest challenges in this election is that, for the first time in his life, he's actually going to have a real opponent. Obama won elections by having primary challengers removed from the ballot and using divorce records to discredit his opponent and to get the Republican candidate to drop out. McCain ran a pathetic campaign that refused to say anything bad or negative about Obama (for example, that he ATE A DOG) and was stunned that the media that loved him when he was a maverick turned on him when he ran against a Democrat. Obama, when he is not using a teleprompter, is good for at least three 'uh' per sentence and is amazingly thin-skinned. His campaign won't drop the Romney dog 'issue' and keeps reintroducing it time and time again because he simply can't accept anything he has ever done is less than awe-inspiring.
Obama really needs people to ignore the horrible economy and the jobless rate and the way he is making us weaker internationally and focus on anything bad he can think of about a man who's:
'via Blog this'
One of Obama's greatest challenges in this election is that, for the first time in his life, he's actually going to have a real opponent. Obama won elections by having primary challengers removed from the ballot and using divorce records to discredit his opponent and to get the Republican candidate to drop out. McCain ran a pathetic campaign that refused to say anything bad or negative about Obama (for example, that he ATE A DOG) and was stunned that the media that loved him when he was a maverick turned on him when he ran against a Democrat. Obama, when he is not using a teleprompter, is good for at least three 'uh' per sentence and is amazingly thin-skinned. His campaign won't drop the Romney dog 'issue' and keeps reintroducing it time and time again because he simply can't accept anything he has ever done is less than awe-inspiring.
Obama really needs people to ignore the horrible economy and the jobless rate and the way he is making us weaker internationally and focus on anything bad he can think of about a man who's:
- an expert on turning around economies and
- was a moderate governor in one of the most liberal states in the country and
- sober and not cheating on his wife and
- not a fanatic on social issues and
- has spent almost six years running for president, only losing to the man the media backed
- is far more moderate than Obama, who was more to the left than the only member of Congress to declare himself a socialist.
Romney isn't falling into the trap of defining himself by whatever Obama says he is. Romney is pushing for the conversation to be about the failed economic policies of Obama. Obama wants to run against social conservatives in Congress when the Republican party hasn't been less socially conservative and more fiscally conservative... ever. The 'war on women' thing Obama is pushing is to cover up that Republicans don't really care about abortion any more. While the population is getting (slightly) more pro-life, everyone not on the left seems to agree that abortion isn't important when people are not working and Washington is spending us into extinction. It really IS the economy and neither the Republican party nor the public really want to talk about immigration (more illegal immigrants are leaving the US than are coming in; they are deporting themselves) or racism (a black man is running for re-election to the presidency) or sexism (actual sexism is illegal, more women graduate from college than men and I've already talked about abortion). Romney's temperament is too polite and even-keeled to make him look racist by attacking Obama harshly and Romney's whole tone is 'Obama tried but his policies are wrong and don't work,' not 'Obama is a commie muslim terrorist who wasn't born in the US!' I really thing Obama is going to lose this election. More, please!
'via Blog this'
The Obama-Supporting Media goes to the dogs
Literally.
President Dog-Eater's minions are still attacking Romney on his putting a dog in a crate on the roof of his station wagon in 1983. Even though they are looking more and more foolish as they claim Obama eating dogs isn't relevant but Romney taking his dog on vacations is. CBS, formerly the most trusted name in news, has a photo essay on presidents and dogs, showing Obama cradling his dog's head (the dog is named BO, as in Barack Obama). The 'story' is that someone released a report that dogs relieve stress, so they choose to do a photo essay on presidents and their dogs. They also happen to show Obama, the current president and the first president to eat a dog, with his dog. Either this is bias towards Obama or CBS ran out of news.
Part of what makes this whole dog scandal irresistible is that the Left can't admit that they hold anti-American and conflicting principles. Multiculturalism holds that every culture is equally wonderful except for America's. Obama put the dog-eating story in his biography because it was multicultural and un-American and therefore better. He talks about how the Indonesian muslim tradition allows animist and pagan beliefs and rituals such as the belief that eating an animal allows you to gain mystical power from the spirit of the beast. The paragraph ends with his stepfather promising that Obama would get to eat tiger. Tiger is rare and usually a protected or endangered species, certainly not an animal for the dinner table. If a bitter gun-clinger hunted the tiger, he would be attacked on the Left as a butcher and killer of a majestic animal not meant for sport. If the tiger is hunted and butchered and given to a small child on the belief that the tiger's spirit will pass to the kid, however, it is a beautiful example of a diverse and wonderful culture equal to our own. If an American kills the dog or tiger, bad. If someone from a non-Western culture kills a dog or tiger, good. Putting a dog crate on the roof of a car to take the dog on vacation means you aren't fit to be president. Eating dog as a child and talking about it in a memoir with no revulsion or shame means you are multicultural and fit to be president.
Here's a fun trick: read an article about a politician in trouble and count how many sentences it takes before their political party is mentioned. If it's a Republican, you'll be told that in one or two sentences. If it's a Democrat, they won't mention it in the first two paragraphs. A recent article about Democrat John Edwards, the 2004 VP candidate and 2008 presidential candidate who is facing thirty years in jail for using campaign donations to cover up the fact he fathered a child with his mistress while his wife was dying of cancer, never mentioned his political affiliation. He stole campaign funds from a 98-year-old woman to pay off his mistress who he was having live with his aide (he had the aide claim paternity even though the aide was married and had a vasectomy) while he was running for president. The Left can't mention his party, however. It's not like he took his dog on vacation.
President Dog-Eater's minions are still attacking Romney on his putting a dog in a crate on the roof of his station wagon in 1983. Even though they are looking more and more foolish as they claim Obama eating dogs isn't relevant but Romney taking his dog on vacations is. CBS, formerly the most trusted name in news, has a photo essay on presidents and dogs, showing Obama cradling his dog's head (the dog is named BO, as in Barack Obama). The 'story' is that someone released a report that dogs relieve stress, so they choose to do a photo essay on presidents and their dogs. They also happen to show Obama, the current president and the first president to eat a dog, with his dog. Either this is bias towards Obama or CBS ran out of news.
Part of what makes this whole dog scandal irresistible is that the Left can't admit that they hold anti-American and conflicting principles. Multiculturalism holds that every culture is equally wonderful except for America's. Obama put the dog-eating story in his biography because it was multicultural and un-American and therefore better. He talks about how the Indonesian muslim tradition allows animist and pagan beliefs and rituals such as the belief that eating an animal allows you to gain mystical power from the spirit of the beast. The paragraph ends with his stepfather promising that Obama would get to eat tiger. Tiger is rare and usually a protected or endangered species, certainly not an animal for the dinner table. If a bitter gun-clinger hunted the tiger, he would be attacked on the Left as a butcher and killer of a majestic animal not meant for sport. If the tiger is hunted and butchered and given to a small child on the belief that the tiger's spirit will pass to the kid, however, it is a beautiful example of a diverse and wonderful culture equal to our own. If an American kills the dog or tiger, bad. If someone from a non-Western culture kills a dog or tiger, good. Putting a dog crate on the roof of a car to take the dog on vacation means you aren't fit to be president. Eating dog as a child and talking about it in a memoir with no revulsion or shame means you are multicultural and fit to be president.
Here's a fun trick: read an article about a politician in trouble and count how many sentences it takes before their political party is mentioned. If it's a Republican, you'll be told that in one or two sentences. If it's a Democrat, they won't mention it in the first two paragraphs. A recent article about Democrat John Edwards, the 2004 VP candidate and 2008 presidential candidate who is facing thirty years in jail for using campaign donations to cover up the fact he fathered a child with his mistress while his wife was dying of cancer, never mentioned his political affiliation. He stole campaign funds from a 98-year-old woman to pay off his mistress who he was having live with his aide (he had the aide claim paternity even though the aide was married and had a vasectomy) while he was running for president. The Left can't mention his party, however. It's not like he took his dog on vacation.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Gay Marriage and Gayness In General
I 'liked' George Takei on Facebook and get his posts, mostly funny pictures with a pun describing them. He did a post today about North Carolina and a no-gay-marriage amendment up for a vote soon. As an Evil Conservative I'm supposed to hate gay marriage and the mainstreaming of gayness in our culture but I don't and it makes me angry that we're in this fight. Part of conservatism is a live-and-let-live mentality towards most social issues. I mentioned in my Mad Men post that I love beautiful women and Christina Hendricks is pretty much the center of the Venn diagram in regards to what I find attractive. Liking tall and busty redheads doesn't affect my opinion on the UN or energy policy or the fact that our president ate dog (HE ATE DOG! DOG! I LIKE DOGS! DOGS ARE NOT FOR EATING!) and bragged about it. It affects who I date and do a google image search for and that's really about it. Gay people getting married doesn't seem like a problem for me. The one argument I've heard that was even slightly compelling against gay marriage is that it would be a tool polygamists would use in arguing that polygamy should be legal. It stopped being slightly compelling when I learned that the British government recognizes polygamy on some levels but gay marriage is not. Gays are gay, gays get in long-term relationships and gays have to deal with the legal problems of property ownership, not getting benefits a straight couple gets (insurance, pension, etc), the division of assets after a breakup and so on.
Part of the anti-gay bias, I think, is the confusion with homosexuality and pedophilia. It started with the Greeks liking grown men to 'mentor' teen boys and the Catholic Church perpetuated it with their silence about pedophile priests. Some people think that gay means you'll molest boys. It ignores men that molest girls as well as women that molest boys. To be blunt, it's a stupid argument.
Another part of anti-gay bias might be better described as a bias against those not following traditional gender roles. Back in the 1980s, there was a 'Saturday Night Live' character called Pat whose sex was impossible to tell. The gag was that Pat would say something that sounded like proof Pat was one sex (It's that time of month I hate...) and then finish the sentence with something that made it ambiguous (you know, bill time!). It was funny in part because the other people in the sketch knew that it didn't matter and it shouldn't matter but they just wanted to know. I've said, when a woman talks about something difficult and painful in regards to women's fashion or hygiene, that if I were a woman, I'd be the hairiest lesbian anybody ever saw. I had a friend that was a drag queen and even he used dancer's leggings rather than shave his legs. I occasionally wear polo shirts and khakis because they're comfortable and acceptable pretty much everywhere. My haircut is pretty basic, relatively short and parted on the side. A few weeks ago I watched a cute animal video (cute animals constitute about 40% of the internet with porn being another 40% and everything else taking what's left) and the zookeeper being interviewed had my haircut and was wearing a polo shirt and khakis. It took a few minutes to realize she was a woman. When I figured it out, I was vaguely bothered for a moment. I had no idea of her sexual preference and didn't give a damn but her appearance not being gender-appropriate was bothersome enough that I consciously noticed it.
We could have a really boring argument over what percentage of gender is biological in nature and how much is imprinted on us but whatever is imprinted onto us is almost never consciously chosen. One of the terms for homosexual is 'queer' which originally meant unusual and not fitting in. People know that it's not socially acceptable to be prejudiced against gays; there are serious social and legal consequences for it. You can lose your job in the private sector and almost certainly lose it in the public sector and people will think you're a hateful asshole if you show honest prejudice against gays. I think that it is a good thing for our society that homosexuality is acceptable. I mentioned that I like George Takei who is a proud gay. I was inspired to talk about this when watching an interview of John Barrowman, an actor who plays a recurring character on 'Doctor Who' (yeah, I said I was a geek) and came to find out that the actor (who plays a slutty bisexual from the future) is a flaming gay guy who is hilarious and raunchy. The interview is great and fun and he talks about his 'partner' (can I say that that is an awkward term and I wish it would go away?) and it hit me that out gay people tend to be pretty cool. Not sure if it's because boring and uptight gays tend to stay in the closet somewhat but it is interesting. Look, I am not an expert in gender studies and this post is running long already. Gay marriage doesn't hurt society. Hatred does. Forcing people into the margins does. If you can't handle a flamboyant gay couple at the next table or the next door down, I hear the Amish are hiring.
Part of the anti-gay bias, I think, is the confusion with homosexuality and pedophilia. It started with the Greeks liking grown men to 'mentor' teen boys and the Catholic Church perpetuated it with their silence about pedophile priests. Some people think that gay means you'll molest boys. It ignores men that molest girls as well as women that molest boys. To be blunt, it's a stupid argument.
Another part of anti-gay bias might be better described as a bias against those not following traditional gender roles. Back in the 1980s, there was a 'Saturday Night Live' character called Pat whose sex was impossible to tell. The gag was that Pat would say something that sounded like proof Pat was one sex (It's that time of month I hate...) and then finish the sentence with something that made it ambiguous (you know, bill time!). It was funny in part because the other people in the sketch knew that it didn't matter and it shouldn't matter but they just wanted to know. I've said, when a woman talks about something difficult and painful in regards to women's fashion or hygiene, that if I were a woman, I'd be the hairiest lesbian anybody ever saw. I had a friend that was a drag queen and even he used dancer's leggings rather than shave his legs. I occasionally wear polo shirts and khakis because they're comfortable and acceptable pretty much everywhere. My haircut is pretty basic, relatively short and parted on the side. A few weeks ago I watched a cute animal video (cute animals constitute about 40% of the internet with porn being another 40% and everything else taking what's left) and the zookeeper being interviewed had my haircut and was wearing a polo shirt and khakis. It took a few minutes to realize she was a woman. When I figured it out, I was vaguely bothered for a moment. I had no idea of her sexual preference and didn't give a damn but her appearance not being gender-appropriate was bothersome enough that I consciously noticed it.
We could have a really boring argument over what percentage of gender is biological in nature and how much is imprinted on us but whatever is imprinted onto us is almost never consciously chosen. One of the terms for homosexual is 'queer' which originally meant unusual and not fitting in. People know that it's not socially acceptable to be prejudiced against gays; there are serious social and legal consequences for it. You can lose your job in the private sector and almost certainly lose it in the public sector and people will think you're a hateful asshole if you show honest prejudice against gays. I think that it is a good thing for our society that homosexuality is acceptable. I mentioned that I like George Takei who is a proud gay. I was inspired to talk about this when watching an interview of John Barrowman, an actor who plays a recurring character on 'Doctor Who' (yeah, I said I was a geek) and came to find out that the actor (who plays a slutty bisexual from the future) is a flaming gay guy who is hilarious and raunchy. The interview is great and fun and he talks about his 'partner' (can I say that that is an awkward term and I wish it would go away?) and it hit me that out gay people tend to be pretty cool. Not sure if it's because boring and uptight gays tend to stay in the closet somewhat but it is interesting. Look, I am not an expert in gender studies and this post is running long already. Gay marriage doesn't hurt society. Hatred does. Forcing people into the margins does. If you can't handle a flamboyant gay couple at the next table or the next door down, I hear the Amish are hiring.
Four Dead in Ohio
I used to go to Kent State. May 4 was usually in finals week and people went a bit goofy about the shootings. I had several professors that were there during the shootings (one was in the parking lot and hid behind his briefcase) and talked about how shocking it was. The facts are this: there were protests over Nixon bombing Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War, the ROTC building was burned down and the fire department was kept back by protesters so the fire couldn't be put out, there was a riot where businesses were broken into and looted, the Ohio National Guard was pulled out of Akron (there was a Teamsters strike and trucks were being shot at and having rocks dropped from overpasses) and put on campus, there was a protest at the bottom of a hill that turned violent, gas grenades were used, the ONG backed up the hill before turning around and firing started. Four died.
I've heard about the incident from people that were there and I have been on that hill. I also was there at the same time of day as the shooting. From the point of the shooters, there was a dorm on the left side of the parking lot and a few thousand people lived in dorms to their left. Right behind the parking lot is a path for the people in those dorms to get to the classes on the right. Behind that path is an empty field and beyond them are dorms for another few thousand people. In a minute during that time of the day, over an thousand people walk past that parking lot. If you're concentrating on the people in the lot, climb up a small hill and turn around, you're suddenly seeing over a thousand people heading towards you. The hill itself is steep and has a lot of exposed roots; I took that hill once as a shortcut and it wasn't worth climbing it to save three minutes. The shooters were wearing gas masks and holding heavy and bulky rifles. Their visibility would have been poor and their peripheral vision gone. When they turned around, they'd have seen a thousand people and, not knowing the ebb and flow of foot traffic, it would have been a shock. Thirteen seconds of shooting later, four were dead and nine injured.
The shootings weren't justified. Not at all. Not even close. They weren't shooting at people climbing the hill, they shot indiscriminately. Bullets were pulled out of a dorm several hundred yards away and the kids walking to and from their dorms were shot. My guess, from what I heard from witnesses and walking the ground, is that one of the shooters panicked or tripped and fired and all the other ONG thought they were getting shot at and also panicked. We think of National Guard troops as competent and as well-trained as active military. After a decade of two wars in the Middle East, the National Guard is well-trained and know what they are doing. Back in the Vietnam era, however, the National Guard were kids whose parents had money or pull and got them into the Guard so they didn't have to go to Vietnam. They were tired and stressed out from guarding overpasses and then sent to Kent to have thousands of people their own age throw rocks and call them baby killers. They wouldn't have been well-trained in marksmanship or basic gun safety (like not putting your finger on the trigger until you are going to fire). As an Evil Conservative, I hate to say this, but the damnhippies are in the right. The Guard were protected from prosecution and the state and federal governments did their best to sweep it under the rug. Reagan, who was California's governor, gave an angry speech blaming the damnhippies (I can't find the speech on youtube though I'm sure it's in some of the documentaries about this) that was pretty embarrassing if you're a fan of his. It's one of the things that really helped to radicalize the Baby Boomer generation because it was so unfair and wrong and there was no justice.
Kent State, which was not a liberal campus (it was known for its good business school) wasn't over it when I was there twenty years later. A lot of damnhippies went there because the shootings made them think it was a liberal university and that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was there for the first Gulf War (the one where we defended a repressive regime against another repressive regime, not the one where we defeated a repressive regime to create a repressive regime that is a haven for terrorists) and the damnhippies were loud but didn't do a lot of protesting because they were getting high and listening to indie rock and alternative rock. No, really, they were my roomies, I watched them and stepped over their passed-out bodies. I left Kent around the time they finally installed a memorial which was panned a pretty ugly and meaningless (and was next to the architecture school, ironically). Today's generation are more radical by far than mine (during my time at Kent, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed while the Chinese Communists became factory owners oppressing their workers for profit) and are now Occupying city centers and their parents' basements. What a long, strange trip it's been.
I've heard about the incident from people that were there and I have been on that hill. I also was there at the same time of day as the shooting. From the point of the shooters, there was a dorm on the left side of the parking lot and a few thousand people lived in dorms to their left. Right behind the parking lot is a path for the people in those dorms to get to the classes on the right. Behind that path is an empty field and beyond them are dorms for another few thousand people. In a minute during that time of the day, over an thousand people walk past that parking lot. If you're concentrating on the people in the lot, climb up a small hill and turn around, you're suddenly seeing over a thousand people heading towards you. The hill itself is steep and has a lot of exposed roots; I took that hill once as a shortcut and it wasn't worth climbing it to save three minutes. The shooters were wearing gas masks and holding heavy and bulky rifles. Their visibility would have been poor and their peripheral vision gone. When they turned around, they'd have seen a thousand people and, not knowing the ebb and flow of foot traffic, it would have been a shock. Thirteen seconds of shooting later, four were dead and nine injured.
The shootings weren't justified. Not at all. Not even close. They weren't shooting at people climbing the hill, they shot indiscriminately. Bullets were pulled out of a dorm several hundred yards away and the kids walking to and from their dorms were shot. My guess, from what I heard from witnesses and walking the ground, is that one of the shooters panicked or tripped and fired and all the other ONG thought they were getting shot at and also panicked. We think of National Guard troops as competent and as well-trained as active military. After a decade of two wars in the Middle East, the National Guard is well-trained and know what they are doing. Back in the Vietnam era, however, the National Guard were kids whose parents had money or pull and got them into the Guard so they didn't have to go to Vietnam. They were tired and stressed out from guarding overpasses and then sent to Kent to have thousands of people their own age throw rocks and call them baby killers. They wouldn't have been well-trained in marksmanship or basic gun safety (like not putting your finger on the trigger until you are going to fire). As an Evil Conservative, I hate to say this, but the damnhippies are in the right. The Guard were protected from prosecution and the state and federal governments did their best to sweep it under the rug. Reagan, who was California's governor, gave an angry speech blaming the damnhippies (I can't find the speech on youtube though I'm sure it's in some of the documentaries about this) that was pretty embarrassing if you're a fan of his. It's one of the things that really helped to radicalize the Baby Boomer generation because it was so unfair and wrong and there was no justice.
Kent State, which was not a liberal campus (it was known for its good business school) wasn't over it when I was there twenty years later. A lot of damnhippies went there because the shootings made them think it was a liberal university and that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was there for the first Gulf War (the one where we defended a repressive regime against another repressive regime, not the one where we defeated a repressive regime to create a repressive regime that is a haven for terrorists) and the damnhippies were loud but didn't do a lot of protesting because they were getting high and listening to indie rock and alternative rock. No, really, they were my roomies, I watched them and stepped over their passed-out bodies. I left Kent around the time they finally installed a memorial which was panned a pretty ugly and meaningless (and was next to the architecture school, ironically). Today's generation are more radical by far than mine (during my time at Kent, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed while the Chinese Communists became factory owners oppressing their workers for profit) and are now Occupying city centers and their parents' basements. What a long, strange trip it's been.
May the Fourth be with you!
I'm a geek. This should come as no surprise; my blog's name is about how I want a jetpack. Today, as you can see by the pun in my title, is Star Wars day. I'm a big fan of Star Wars. I was a little kid when the first one came out and it just blew me away. The epic story, the special effects, the aliens everywhere, the technology that seems so much more plausible than Star Trek. Star Trek was too clean, too pristine while Star Wars was gritty and grimy and seemed so realistic. The music was amazing and a friend and I used to listen to the soundtrack on vinyl as elementary school kids. My dad used Star Wars to get me interested in science by giving me a telescope and taking me to planetarium shows and giving me science books.
George Lucas is a controversial figure in some ways due to the prequels that the fans HATE and that he can come off as surly when talking about the fanboys. Hell, there's a movie called 'The People versus George Lucas'. Still, his movies made millions of people happy for two generations and he's always been great when it comes to letting people make fan movies in his franchise. There are thousands of people who were inspired to work in movies because of his work and his special effects company, Industrial Lights and Magic, have created a large percentage of new movie technology, especially when it comes to CGI. He's the movie version of Steve Jobs. And the first three movies are damn good, especially 'Empire'. So Happy Star Wars Day! Or as R2 would say, beep-boop-chirp-doop-weet!
George Lucas is a controversial figure in some ways due to the prequels that the fans HATE and that he can come off as surly when talking about the fanboys. Hell, there's a movie called 'The People versus George Lucas'. Still, his movies made millions of people happy for two generations and he's always been great when it comes to letting people make fan movies in his franchise. There are thousands of people who were inspired to work in movies because of his work and his special effects company, Industrial Lights and Magic, have created a large percentage of new movie technology, especially when it comes to CGI. He's the movie version of Steve Jobs. And the first three movies are damn good, especially 'Empire'. So Happy Star Wars Day! Or as R2 would say, beep-boop-chirp-doop-weet!
Reviewing Stuff I've Seen: Mad Men, Season 5 Episode 7
I'm a big fan of 'Mad Men'. It pretty much hits all my likes for TV or movies:
- History and historical accuracy. It's done a wonderful job of reflecting the era and getting all those details right. From the fashion* to the technology to how people acted back then, it's a lot like looking at Life magazine from back in the day.
- Good writing and wit. Roger Sterling is like an American James Bond, if James Bond wasn't a government worker.
- Long story arcs and character development. The best for this was 'Babylon 5', where the entire five-year story arc was written out so you'd see something in one season that would pay off four years later.
- Beautiful women. The only problem is that Elizabeth Moss is actually pretty but they do their best to make her not pretty and to emphasize her nose. She was the president's daughter in 'West Wing'. She was cute in that and now there's at least one shot per episode where she turns and I'm glad the show isn't in 3D. I know for a fact that they had mirror technology in 1959.
- You can't tell in the first five minutes what's going to happen but it always plays fair. One of the disadvantages of reading a lot when you're a kid is you've seen mediocre plots hundreds of times and you can see how it's going to end and that is so annoying. My mom and I are good at rolling our eyes at the same time because the story has telegraphed itself.
- Good directing. Several of the actors have directed episodes this season and done a wonderful job. It's one of the perks lead actors get when renewing a contract because it doesn't cost the studio anything. Star Trek is pretty famous for doing that.
- An alum of 'Firefly' is in it. Christina Hendricks played Saffron in two episodes. Shiny!
This season almost didn't happen because the network decided to try to cut the budget of their runaway successful series. I'm glad it's back on but I miss Betty Draper (she's had one episode and I think ten seconds in another episode). Yes, the character is a horrible person but January Jones does a wonderful job with her and, as previously stated, I like beautiful women. Megan seemed like such a mistake at first but she's wonderful and the actress is just doing an amazing job. Plus I like beautiful women.
So this episode. Pretty good. I'm a big fan of Sally Draper (the actress is wonderful and I think she's going to make the transition from child actor to adult pretty well- I've seen some interviews and she seems to have a good head on her shoulders) and an episode that's Sally-centric is always a lot of fun. Sally manages to get to go to stay with Don for a bit by breaking her step-grandma's ankle with a phone cord. Don's in-laws are in from Montreal to see him get a major award for writing a letter about stopping working with cigarette companies. Her mom is a cougar (le wow) and her father is a communist and an ass. Roger meets with his wife who is handling the 60s very well (great outfit and makeup- there was a line of light eyeliner above the mascara that caught my eye) and gets her to do some research for him on rich guys giving Don his major award. Roger had inherited the Lucky Strike account and it was at one time 70% of their agency's income so this season Roger is trying to regain his relevance. He had a cute bit with Sally where he acted like she was his partner; Roger is a male slut and while him dating a junior high student would normally sound horrifying, he managed to behave himself with her and you can see how he must have been wonderful with his daughter and heartbroken when she stopped liking him. The only creepy part was when Sally caught Don's mother-in-law giving a blow job to Roger.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
He makes it too easy, really.
Presidential Proclamation -- Loyalty Day, 2012 | The White House:
President Obama declared May First to be 'Loyalty Day'. May First, the International Workers' Day, the day that celebrates communism and all it's done for us. It's now 'Loyalty Day'. As with most everything written for Obama, it has the added charm of being impenetrable fluff. People defend the country and also community organize. Our country has struggled 'against threats from within and without'. There's no there there. It's the intellectual equivalent of fragmented sentences, phrases with the added charm of being meaningless. Sure, it equates fighting for your country with making sure people are properly enfranchised but I don't see where 'loyalty' comes into it. Back in the 1950s, liberals went insane over 'loyalty oaths', statements that teachers and bureaucrats had to sign saying they weren't going to support foreign foes. It was a stupid idea; people committing treason wouldn't have a problem signing it and people concerned about civil liberties which our enemies are against would have a problem with the oath.
Loyalty Day sounds like something you'd hear about in totalitarian regimes, not the US. To declare the day most associated with communism as Loyalty Day is so tone-deaf they'd either have to be idiots or such True Believers that they can't comprehend that a people who rebelled against a king would feel uncomfortable about Loyalty Day.
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President Obama declared May First to be 'Loyalty Day'. May First, the International Workers' Day, the day that celebrates communism and all it's done for us. It's now 'Loyalty Day'. As with most everything written for Obama, it has the added charm of being impenetrable fluff. People defend the country and also community organize. Our country has struggled 'against threats from within and without'. There's no there there. It's the intellectual equivalent of fragmented sentences, phrases with the added charm of being meaningless. Sure, it equates fighting for your country with making sure people are properly enfranchised but I don't see where 'loyalty' comes into it. Back in the 1950s, liberals went insane over 'loyalty oaths', statements that teachers and bureaucrats had to sign saying they weren't going to support foreign foes. It was a stupid idea; people committing treason wouldn't have a problem signing it and people concerned about civil liberties which our enemies are against would have a problem with the oath.
Loyalty Day sounds like something you'd hear about in totalitarian regimes, not the US. To declare the day most associated with communism as Loyalty Day is so tone-deaf they'd either have to be idiots or such True Believers that they can't comprehend that a people who rebelled against a king would feel uncomfortable about Loyalty Day.
'via Blog this'
They're reading 1984 like it was a how-to manual
Senate Passes Bill to Let IRS Take Passports From Tardy Taxpayers:
The Senate passed a highway construction bill and included in the highway construction bill, which is supposed to be about highway construction, a provision to take the passports of anyone the IRS claims might owe more than $50,000 in back taxes. There doesn't need to be a trial or going before a judge at all. The IRS just needs to claim someone owes the money and they can't leave the US until they pay up and then go through the process afterwards of appealing the... well, it can't be called a judgement because there's no judge or defense attorney or protection under the Fourth and Fifth Amendment and it can't be fought in a federal court. There's not a lot of people fleeing the country to avoid paying their taxes, either. The Republicans in the Senate fought against this but failed. The Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid (who's a Mormon but never had any of the anti-Mormon attacks Romney gets from the media), put it in the bill but won't discuss it with the media.
The House Republicans have said they won't support this and even Obama has talked about vetoing a bill with this in it. My gut says that it's going to be used by the Obama campaign to complain about the Republicans in Congress; everything is either the fault of Bush or the House being controlled by Republicans since Jan 2011. The other possibility is that it can be used against Republican donors. Obama recently called out eight donors to Romney BY NAME, saying that "Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law," even though none of them have been indicted or accused of any crimes. It's an old tactic (the Clintons early in their administration took copies of dozens of FBI files on their opponents to the White House as blackmail) but the Obama administration is taking it further. On the whim of a bureaucrat, your right to travel as a free citizen can be taken away. The Obama administration wanted to force those bidding on federal contracts to disclose which campaigns they donated to but have stopped trying to do so after public pressure.
If you're a policy wonk, you've heard the phrase 'chilling effect' before. It means that X will make it less likely that people will do Y out of fear of retribution. The Obama administration is throwing out as many chilling effects as they can, partly because massive bureaucracy creates areas of regulation never dreamed up by Congress and partly because they like it. I'll do a whole post later about what I call the 'Nixon test', but when I judge laws and regulations by asking if I'd be comfortable with Nixon having that power and not liking me. If the President of the United States calls you out during a speech by name, saying you've been on the wrong side of the law and are questionable for donating to his opponent is a powerful and terrifying thing. Bureaucrats that support the president on the federal or state or local level can be inspired to look for ways to investigate or attack you. Remember 'Joe the Plumber'? Obama came on his lawn, started talking to him and announced that, at a certain point, Obama thought you'd have made enough money and the government should spread the rest around? A state official went through several databases to get dirt on 'Joe the Plumber' because he asked a question that Obama fumbled the answer to. Obama was elected to the Senate in part because his campaign went after sealed divorce records in the primary and general election.
They're reading 1984 like it was a how-to manual.
'via Blog this'
The Senate passed a highway construction bill and included in the highway construction bill, which is supposed to be about highway construction, a provision to take the passports of anyone the IRS claims might owe more than $50,000 in back taxes. There doesn't need to be a trial or going before a judge at all. The IRS just needs to claim someone owes the money and they can't leave the US until they pay up and then go through the process afterwards of appealing the... well, it can't be called a judgement because there's no judge or defense attorney or protection under the Fourth and Fifth Amendment and it can't be fought in a federal court. There's not a lot of people fleeing the country to avoid paying their taxes, either. The Republicans in the Senate fought against this but failed. The Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid (who's a Mormon but never had any of the anti-Mormon attacks Romney gets from the media), put it in the bill but won't discuss it with the media.
The House Republicans have said they won't support this and even Obama has talked about vetoing a bill with this in it. My gut says that it's going to be used by the Obama campaign to complain about the Republicans in Congress; everything is either the fault of Bush or the House being controlled by Republicans since Jan 2011. The other possibility is that it can be used against Republican donors. Obama recently called out eight donors to Romney BY NAME, saying that "Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law," even though none of them have been indicted or accused of any crimes. It's an old tactic (the Clintons early in their administration took copies of dozens of FBI files on their opponents to the White House as blackmail) but the Obama administration is taking it further. On the whim of a bureaucrat, your right to travel as a free citizen can be taken away. The Obama administration wanted to force those bidding on federal contracts to disclose which campaigns they donated to but have stopped trying to do so after public pressure.
If you're a policy wonk, you've heard the phrase 'chilling effect' before. It means that X will make it less likely that people will do Y out of fear of retribution. The Obama administration is throwing out as many chilling effects as they can, partly because massive bureaucracy creates areas of regulation never dreamed up by Congress and partly because they like it. I'll do a whole post later about what I call the 'Nixon test', but when I judge laws and regulations by asking if I'd be comfortable with Nixon having that power and not liking me. If the President of the United States calls you out during a speech by name, saying you've been on the wrong side of the law and are questionable for donating to his opponent is a powerful and terrifying thing. Bureaucrats that support the president on the federal or state or local level can be inspired to look for ways to investigate or attack you. Remember 'Joe the Plumber'? Obama came on his lawn, started talking to him and announced that, at a certain point, Obama thought you'd have made enough money and the government should spread the rest around? A state official went through several databases to get dirt on 'Joe the Plumber' because he asked a question that Obama fumbled the answer to. Obama was elected to the Senate in part because his campaign went after sealed divorce records in the primary and general election.
They're reading 1984 like it was a how-to manual.
'via Blog this'
My God, He's A MORON!
Obama campaign puts Bo on the trail - The Washington Post:
Obama's campaign and other Democrats have been attacking Romney for years over a story that, in the early 1980s, he put his dog in a cage on the roof of his station wagon so the dog could go on trips with him. The first attacks were done by the Clinton campaign in 2007 (her campaign also said McCain wasn't a legal American and ineligible to be President- her campaign started the Birther movement) and Obama's people have been pushing it hard recently. A blogger (Jim Treacher at dailycaller.com) discovered that Obama wrote about eating dog as a child and a million Obama-eats-dog jokes were made. The Obama campaign is furious that their plan backfired and are both pushing the Romney-is-a-bad-dog-owner thing and also saying that it's ridiculous to talk about Obama being even worse to dogs. Last Saturday, at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Obama made several dog-eating jokes. Two days later, he's trying to get dog lovers to vote against the guy who takes his dog on vacation and vote for the guy who eats dogs.
If you watch the White House interact with the media, they continuously lie and spin when there's no real reason to other than the belief that Obama is perfect in every way and it is inconceivable that he could ever be wrong. The current press secretary, Jay Carney, is especially bad at it and it's a guilty pleasure watching the press corps make him twist in the wind. I have to admit, however, he did make a good joke when asked about the drama; he refused to comment so he could keep 'out of the doghouse.'
'via Blog this'
Obama's campaign and other Democrats have been attacking Romney for years over a story that, in the early 1980s, he put his dog in a cage on the roof of his station wagon so the dog could go on trips with him. The first attacks were done by the Clinton campaign in 2007 (her campaign also said McCain wasn't a legal American and ineligible to be President- her campaign started the Birther movement) and Obama's people have been pushing it hard recently. A blogger (Jim Treacher at dailycaller.com) discovered that Obama wrote about eating dog as a child and a million Obama-eats-dog jokes were made. The Obama campaign is furious that their plan backfired and are both pushing the Romney-is-a-bad-dog-owner thing and also saying that it's ridiculous to talk about Obama being even worse to dogs. Last Saturday, at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Obama made several dog-eating jokes. Two days later, he's trying to get dog lovers to vote against the guy who takes his dog on vacation and vote for the guy who eats dogs.
If you watch the White House interact with the media, they continuously lie and spin when there's no real reason to other than the belief that Obama is perfect in every way and it is inconceivable that he could ever be wrong. The current press secretary, Jay Carney, is especially bad at it and it's a guilty pleasure watching the press corps make him twist in the wind. I have to admit, however, he did make a good joke when asked about the drama; he refused to comment so he could keep 'out of the doghouse.'
'via Blog this'
NATO Summit, the Chicago Way and Fortress America
No-Fly Zone To Be Enforced By Shoot-To-Kill Order During NATO Summit « CBS Chicago:
NATO has the occasional summit and there's going to be one soon in Chicago. These summits are met with massive protests and this should be an especially bad one with the Occupy movement active. Chicago has a tradition of police riots as well as regular rioting. There's also lots and lots of old fashioned murder and mayhem in Chicago so this has the potential of being very bad. There's a high-rise condo building that's actually locking residents in for several days as it's going to be too dangerous to have doors that open near the summit site.
The article that inspired this blog post is about how the Air Force has been ordered to shoot down planes that come within ten miles of the summit. Non-commercial flights aren't supposed to enter that zone anyway, since there are airports and skyscrapers and millions of people at risk if your plane's engine conks out. Similar zones exist around most cities for this reason. They aren't shoot-to-kill zones, however. The White House under Clinton was almost hit by a small plane (it crashed onto the South Lawn, I believe) and there were fighter jets dispatched during the Bush administration when planes got too close to the White House. It's rare, but there are morons with pilot's licenses.
The shoot-to-kill thing troubles me because we've seen this administration decide that it can kill Americans that it considers terrorists anywhere in the world without so much as an indictment (a DA famously said that he could get a ham sandwich indicted as an example of how easy the process is). The administration has produced a legal brief explaining how it found this right, but the brief is classified. No, really. Obama is using drones in the Middle East to kill people at several times the rate that Bush did, even though Obama said that it was wrong to do so. Just like how Guantanamo's terrorist prison was going to be closed by him, except it wasn't. Now he's okay with shooting down planes over a major American city if the need arises.
One of the problems with a big government is that it has mission creep. It keeps making more and more jobs for itself, new mandates and regulations. Remember how the TSA was going to do security at the airports only? Not anymore. They have searched train passengers AFTER they arrived at their destination and checked IDs at a Social Security office. It's not what the law establishing them gave them the right to do, but that doesn't matter. They can expand themselves to the point where they are checking IDs (but not to see if someone's an illegal alien, heavens, no) at federal building which would be the job of local security or the US Marshalls. The Department of Education recently bought shotguns and conducted a SWAT-style raid (body armor, automatic weapons, the whole bit) on the house of the husband of a woman possibly involved in student loan fraud. This was before the Department of Homeland Security bought 450,000,000 rounds of pistol ammo. At the rate of usage in the Iraq war, that's six years and five months worth of ammunition usage. Does the Department of Education need a SWAT team? Does the TSA need to interfere with the current security at federal buildings? You have duplication of equipment and forces doing the same job poorly at several times the cost. There's no accountability to the voters because Congress didn't write any laws giving authority to do these things.
The problem with the War on Terror is that it's a tactic. You can sit around and come up with two or three ideas for terror attacks an hour without much effort. Here are five:
'via Blog this'
NATO has the occasional summit and there's going to be one soon in Chicago. These summits are met with massive protests and this should be an especially bad one with the Occupy movement active. Chicago has a tradition of police riots as well as regular rioting. There's also lots and lots of old fashioned murder and mayhem in Chicago so this has the potential of being very bad. There's a high-rise condo building that's actually locking residents in for several days as it's going to be too dangerous to have doors that open near the summit site.
The article that inspired this blog post is about how the Air Force has been ordered to shoot down planes that come within ten miles of the summit. Non-commercial flights aren't supposed to enter that zone anyway, since there are airports and skyscrapers and millions of people at risk if your plane's engine conks out. Similar zones exist around most cities for this reason. They aren't shoot-to-kill zones, however. The White House under Clinton was almost hit by a small plane (it crashed onto the South Lawn, I believe) and there were fighter jets dispatched during the Bush administration when planes got too close to the White House. It's rare, but there are morons with pilot's licenses.
The shoot-to-kill thing troubles me because we've seen this administration decide that it can kill Americans that it considers terrorists anywhere in the world without so much as an indictment (a DA famously said that he could get a ham sandwich indicted as an example of how easy the process is). The administration has produced a legal brief explaining how it found this right, but the brief is classified. No, really. Obama is using drones in the Middle East to kill people at several times the rate that Bush did, even though Obama said that it was wrong to do so. Just like how Guantanamo's terrorist prison was going to be closed by him, except it wasn't. Now he's okay with shooting down planes over a major American city if the need arises.
One of the problems with a big government is that it has mission creep. It keeps making more and more jobs for itself, new mandates and regulations. Remember how the TSA was going to do security at the airports only? Not anymore. They have searched train passengers AFTER they arrived at their destination and checked IDs at a Social Security office. It's not what the law establishing them gave them the right to do, but that doesn't matter. They can expand themselves to the point where they are checking IDs (but not to see if someone's an illegal alien, heavens, no) at federal building which would be the job of local security or the US Marshalls. The Department of Education recently bought shotguns and conducted a SWAT-style raid (body armor, automatic weapons, the whole bit) on the house of the husband of a woman possibly involved in student loan fraud. This was before the Department of Homeland Security bought 450,000,000 rounds of pistol ammo. At the rate of usage in the Iraq war, that's six years and five months worth of ammunition usage. Does the Department of Education need a SWAT team? Does the TSA need to interfere with the current security at federal buildings? You have duplication of equipment and forces doing the same job poorly at several times the cost. There's no accountability to the voters because Congress didn't write any laws giving authority to do these things.
The problem with the War on Terror is that it's a tactic. You can sit around and come up with two or three ideas for terror attacks an hour without much effort. Here are five:
- Using crop dusters to spray chemical weapons around a water reservoir.
- Two or three truck bombs (think Oklahoma City) detonate during rush hour on bridges in New York.
- Car bomb in the tailgating section of a stadium.
- Suicide bomber at the TSA checkpoint in an airport.
- Truck bomb parked on train tracks next to a bridge.
Between one and three terrorists are required for those attacks. Right now, as I write this, I can hear a prop airplane flying a few miles away. I'm not terrified because the chance of it being a terrorist is one in billions. The goal of terrorism is terror. The terrorists want us scared because scared people are stupid and make bad decisions. The TSA and the DHS were stupid decisions and so is shooting down planes over Chicago.
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Thursday, April 26, 2012
The love of theory is the root of all evil
Afterburner with Bill Whittle: The Train Set - YouTube:
"The love of theory is the root of all evil." Think about that for a moment and you start to see how powerful a concept it is. The love of theory is the root of all evil. I'm close to a cousin who is an anarchist. Through him, I meet a lot of socialists and communists and they always say that the theory of socialism or communism is sound, it's just never been applied in the right way. Communism killed over one hundred million people in the twentieth century. North Koreans are two inches shorter than South Koreans after three generations of Communism. It takes armed guards and razor wire and gunboats to keep people in communist countries; the Berlin Wall wasn't there to keep people out of East Germany. But Communism is someday going to be implemented perfectly and everyone will be happy and skittles will shoot out of unicorn butts.
Socialism is the perfect system except it doesn't work. Margaret Thatcher once said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Socialism is wonderful, we are told, because the government runs everything. Name one thing the government does well. Roads? Nope. Education? We spend more money on education than any other country. We're 14 in reading and 19 in math. In California's state university system, there are more administrators than professors; fewer people teach than pass emails and forms around. If you look at large cities in the US, they are generally Democrat enclaves and have been for generations. They vary between the corrupt and incompetent Chicago to the post-apocalyptic and corrupt Detroit. US socialism is an utter failure everywhere it's tried. European socialism is a disaster as the recovery from the 2008 recession has stopped and this week Britain announced they are in a second recession. Most of Europe is broke and there's no one to bail them out. Europe is increasingly run by bureaucrats that were never elected administering regulations through a government that was never voted in.
The love of theory is the root of all evil. Obama and his cronies worship at the altar of Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics says that the government should tax highly and spend money it doesn't have to create economic activity. It's never actually worked, anywhere, ever, but the idea that bureaucrats can direct the world's most complex economic system is a seductive one. Quantitative easing is where the Federal Reserve buys US Treasury bonds with money that doesn't exist before the purchase. What this does is reduce the value of US currency because there's no actual goods or things of value attached to this new money. It's inflation, except the government has changed how it calculates inflation so it doesn't include things like food or energy. This is one of the reasons oil is more expensive; oil is a thing that has value and when money backed by less and less tries to buy it, you need more and more of it to get the same amount.
Billions are spent on 'green jobs' but company after company fold after taking hundreds of millions of dollars each. Green energy will create millions of good jobs except they can't make profits enough to keep going. Wind turbines are expensive to maintain and aren't reliable producers of energy; natural gas-powered electric generators have to be bought and be constantly idling in order to keep the electrical grid from suffering brownouts. In other words, you have to build the fossil-fuel generators as well as the green energy generators. We're told that we're on the cusp of a solar revolution but there just isn't enough energy in sunlight to make it feasible for large-scale power production. It's also dependent on it being day and is affected by cloud cover so, you guessed it, you have to build other power generation capabilities to make up for the fluctuations. Wind and solar plants are usually out in the middle of nowhere, meaning a lot of the energy created is lost during transmission. In the past month, Obama has touted algae and spinach as ways to create power, but they are also limited by the relative weakness of energy in sunlight. There are ways to produce power with no 'greenhouse gases' but they are disapproved of because they can hurt fish (hydroelectric) or make environmentalists made (nuclear).
There are a lot more theories that don't work but are beloved to the detriment of humanity. I'll go into more detail at a later time.
'via Blog this'
"The love of theory is the root of all evil." Think about that for a moment and you start to see how powerful a concept it is. The love of theory is the root of all evil. I'm close to a cousin who is an anarchist. Through him, I meet a lot of socialists and communists and they always say that the theory of socialism or communism is sound, it's just never been applied in the right way. Communism killed over one hundred million people in the twentieth century. North Koreans are two inches shorter than South Koreans after three generations of Communism. It takes armed guards and razor wire and gunboats to keep people in communist countries; the Berlin Wall wasn't there to keep people out of East Germany. But Communism is someday going to be implemented perfectly and everyone will be happy and skittles will shoot out of unicorn butts.
Socialism is the perfect system except it doesn't work. Margaret Thatcher once said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Socialism is wonderful, we are told, because the government runs everything. Name one thing the government does well. Roads? Nope. Education? We spend more money on education than any other country. We're 14 in reading and 19 in math. In California's state university system, there are more administrators than professors; fewer people teach than pass emails and forms around. If you look at large cities in the US, they are generally Democrat enclaves and have been for generations. They vary between the corrupt and incompetent Chicago to the post-apocalyptic and corrupt Detroit. US socialism is an utter failure everywhere it's tried. European socialism is a disaster as the recovery from the 2008 recession has stopped and this week Britain announced they are in a second recession. Most of Europe is broke and there's no one to bail them out. Europe is increasingly run by bureaucrats that were never elected administering regulations through a government that was never voted in.
The love of theory is the root of all evil. Obama and his cronies worship at the altar of Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics says that the government should tax highly and spend money it doesn't have to create economic activity. It's never actually worked, anywhere, ever, but the idea that bureaucrats can direct the world's most complex economic system is a seductive one. Quantitative easing is where the Federal Reserve buys US Treasury bonds with money that doesn't exist before the purchase. What this does is reduce the value of US currency because there's no actual goods or things of value attached to this new money. It's inflation, except the government has changed how it calculates inflation so it doesn't include things like food or energy. This is one of the reasons oil is more expensive; oil is a thing that has value and when money backed by less and less tries to buy it, you need more and more of it to get the same amount.
Billions are spent on 'green jobs' but company after company fold after taking hundreds of millions of dollars each. Green energy will create millions of good jobs except they can't make profits enough to keep going. Wind turbines are expensive to maintain and aren't reliable producers of energy; natural gas-powered electric generators have to be bought and be constantly idling in order to keep the electrical grid from suffering brownouts. In other words, you have to build the fossil-fuel generators as well as the green energy generators. We're told that we're on the cusp of a solar revolution but there just isn't enough energy in sunlight to make it feasible for large-scale power production. It's also dependent on it being day and is affected by cloud cover so, you guessed it, you have to build other power generation capabilities to make up for the fluctuations. Wind and solar plants are usually out in the middle of nowhere, meaning a lot of the energy created is lost during transmission. In the past month, Obama has touted algae and spinach as ways to create power, but they are also limited by the relative weakness of energy in sunlight. There are ways to produce power with no 'greenhouse gases' but they are disapproved of because they can hurt fish (hydroelectric) or make environmentalists made (nuclear).
There are a lot more theories that don't work but are beloved to the detriment of humanity. I'll go into more detail at a later time.
'via Blog this'
Immigration and the Conservative
Romney doing the job Republican establishment just won't do - HUMAN EVENTS:
I'm a big fan of Ann Coulter. She's very witty and goes after liberals with a hammer and tongs and isn't afraid to make liberals sputter in rage. That she's a pretty and tall blonde doesn't hurt, either. Once you get past her turn of a phrase and the controversy that she causes (controversy means a conservative is correct and the Left has no leg to stand on), she's a good researcher and you get a lot of footnotes proving she's right as well as Right.
She talks about illegal immigration and how it divides the Republican party into the Establishment and Conservative wings. The sad truth is that many businesses hire illegals to work dangerous or exhausting jobs for little pay and the immigrants use America's social welfare system to make up for the lesser pay and no benefits. Let me give you an example: several years ago, my parents decided to leave their huge home and move into a much smaller home in a development. For several months, my dad and I would go to several developments a week that were still under construction and wander about, checking how well the buildings were put together, trying to see what room would go where and so on. If there was work going on after 5 PM on a Friday, the workers were Hispanic. If the workers were American, they were home by five and didn't work Saturday. Having illegals working for you saved you a lot of money in salary and workers comp. Hiring Americans exclusively put you at a disadvantage and lowered your profit margin. Illegal immigrants from Mexico are almost twice as likely to utilize government services as Americans (75% to 39%) and the services illegal immigrants use are less efficient in terms of money and time. Taxpayers end up paying for the benefits received by illegals while those companies that hire Americans have to pay for their workers' benefits themselves.
Another problem with illegal immigration is that it is unfair to those that want to come here legally. I've known people with green cards and it's a big bother to fill out all the forms and meet all the regulations and paperwork when being an illegal means you don't have to do any of that. It can take years to get through the waiting list to move to America where illegals that fly here without visas are usually given an appointment to go to court (which they usually skip) and allowed in to do whatever they want. Illegals can usually avoid paying taxes and in many states can ignore the requirements of having a license and insurance to drive. It is a bad idea to tell millions of people that they can break laws when it's convenient but they can get all the benefits of being a legal immigrant or citizen.
Our immigration system is broken. People come here illegally, often carrying drugs for the smugglers. Once they arrive, they are often enslaved to work in sweatshops or brothels. No one knows how many die in the desert or are killed by human traffickers. People following the law are punished and those who break the law are rewarded. Democrats don't want to change the system because illegals mean people the government will have to service, people that might fraudulently vote for them in elections, people who will need them for generations. Establishment Republicans see illegals as discounted workers and are comfortable breaking the law because the chance of being caught is low. People are dying, people are enslaved and people are being taken advantage of. It's okay to some because it means profits or government jobs for Democrats. It's simply wrong to conservatives.
'via Blog this'
I'm a big fan of Ann Coulter. She's very witty and goes after liberals with a hammer and tongs and isn't afraid to make liberals sputter in rage. That she's a pretty and tall blonde doesn't hurt, either. Once you get past her turn of a phrase and the controversy that she causes (controversy means a conservative is correct and the Left has no leg to stand on), she's a good researcher and you get a lot of footnotes proving she's right as well as Right.
She talks about illegal immigration and how it divides the Republican party into the Establishment and Conservative wings. The sad truth is that many businesses hire illegals to work dangerous or exhausting jobs for little pay and the immigrants use America's social welfare system to make up for the lesser pay and no benefits. Let me give you an example: several years ago, my parents decided to leave their huge home and move into a much smaller home in a development. For several months, my dad and I would go to several developments a week that were still under construction and wander about, checking how well the buildings were put together, trying to see what room would go where and so on. If there was work going on after 5 PM on a Friday, the workers were Hispanic. If the workers were American, they were home by five and didn't work Saturday. Having illegals working for you saved you a lot of money in salary and workers comp. Hiring Americans exclusively put you at a disadvantage and lowered your profit margin. Illegal immigrants from Mexico are almost twice as likely to utilize government services as Americans (75% to 39%) and the services illegal immigrants use are less efficient in terms of money and time. Taxpayers end up paying for the benefits received by illegals while those companies that hire Americans have to pay for their workers' benefits themselves.
Another problem with illegal immigration is that it is unfair to those that want to come here legally. I've known people with green cards and it's a big bother to fill out all the forms and meet all the regulations and paperwork when being an illegal means you don't have to do any of that. It can take years to get through the waiting list to move to America where illegals that fly here without visas are usually given an appointment to go to court (which they usually skip) and allowed in to do whatever they want. Illegals can usually avoid paying taxes and in many states can ignore the requirements of having a license and insurance to drive. It is a bad idea to tell millions of people that they can break laws when it's convenient but they can get all the benefits of being a legal immigrant or citizen.
Our immigration system is broken. People come here illegally, often carrying drugs for the smugglers. Once they arrive, they are often enslaved to work in sweatshops or brothels. No one knows how many die in the desert or are killed by human traffickers. People following the law are punished and those who break the law are rewarded. Democrats don't want to change the system because illegals mean people the government will have to service, people that might fraudulently vote for them in elections, people who will need them for generations. Establishment Republicans see illegals as discounted workers and are comfortable breaking the law because the chance of being caught is low. People are dying, people are enslaved and people are being taken advantage of. It's okay to some because it means profits or government jobs for Democrats. It's simply wrong to conservatives.
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Obama Selects Samantha Power to Chair Atrocities Prevention Board | TheBlaze.com
Obama Selects Samantha Power to Chair Atrocities Prevention Board | TheBlaze.com:
I know, I know, Glenn Beck yadda yadda yadda crying crazypants. You're wrong, but that's another post. There is a woman who happens to be influential in the administration, Samantha Power, that promotes a concept called 'Responsibility To Protect.' 'Responsibility To Protect' means that the US and other nations/organizations must militarily intervene to stop genocides, ethnic cleansing and atrocities. She was the voice in the administration that started the ball moving on our military intervention in Libya, where we removed a cowed dictator in order to allow Islamists to take power while Obama broke the War Powers Act. The US has troops in Uganda as part of an effort to track down the warlord Kony as part of the Responsibility To Protect.
The idea of 'R2P' is a nice-sounding and feel-good one but there are real consequences. First off, when the World's Only Superpower steps in, we ironically lend credibility to our opponent. Much of the world hates us and, if we are against someone, much of the world feels the need to support the other guy. One of the reasons that the monster Castro is beloved on the left is that he has framed his utter failure in leading a nation as a fight against the cruel and evil US. North Korea has, for sixty years, declared themselves at total war with the US and explained to their people that the famines and concentration camps and the fact that each generation of North Korean is shorter than the previous one because of malnutrition are all necessary sacrifices to keep the US at bay. Tinpot dictators and warlords the world over will use the fact we are supporting their enemies as propaganda and a recruitment for anti-American terrorists the world over.
The second problem with 'R2P' is that we are no longer deciding where and when the US military is to go in. We are giving corrupt bureaucrats and misguided idealists and people that can make a good youtube video the power to declare war and letting them guide how we use our forces. We did that in the 1990s when we bombed Serbia and intervened militarily in Kosovo. We are still there. No, really, a generation later we are still there. Just like we're still in Western Europe protecting them against the Soviet Union that dissolved even before Kosovo. The 1990s also saw us get involved in the first Gulf War to protect non-democratic regimes from being attacked by another non-democratic regime (our military being stationed in Saudi Arabia is what sent Bin Laden against us, by the way) and the intervention in Somalia (where those pirates that attack from Egypt to India come from) which gave us 'Black Hawk Down'. The US military is designed to do one thing and one thing only: to smash other militaries to tiny bits very quickly and at almost no loss of US life. There is another thing the US military does very well, responding to natural disasters overseas and providing food/water/medical aid and security against looting but that is essentially moving our military to smash an enemy and giving them food instead. As Vietnam and Afghanistan and the two Gulf Wars and Kosovo and Somalia have shown, nation building is something very different and difficult and we have really achieved it twice, in Germany and Japan, and that was after we utterly smashed them to pieces and kept millions of military-age men in POW camps for years afterwards.
The third problem with 'R2P' is that we will be working with unreliable partners. Look at UN Peacekeeping forces and their record of child rape and forced prostitution. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have let terrorists set up ammo dumps and launch missiles at Israel for decades from mere yards away and done nothing except watch. They don't stop the terrorists or blow up the ammo dumps or even alert Israel that rockets are going to be incoming soon. Pakistan has provided intelligence, logistical support and protection for the Taliban in Afghanistan in addition to Bin Laden living a comfortable life in the town home to Pakistan's version of West Point. The Oil-For-Food program run by the UN provided millions of dollars in bribes for UN officials to allow Saddam to siphon tens of billions of dollars for his personal use as well as to rearm after the first Gulf War. The Libyan 'freedom fighters' that we supported included terrorists that have stolen thousands of surface-to-air missiles.
The fourth problem is that 'R2P' can be used against our allies. The article I'm linking to goes into detail about Power said, in 2002, that 'R2P' would lead to the US occupying Israel and pouring billions of dollars into Palestine. She saw that as a good thing. Putting US troops into that mess would not be in our best interests. The UN is openly anti-American and putting our military at their disposal is just a bad idea. Putting our military at their disposal with them writing the rules of engagement is even worse. It also goes against the Constitution where Congress declares war, not the UN or the President.
One of the problems with liberalism is that the goals are what matter, not the results. Conservatives are forced to look at their failures and examine why they failed. Liberals, not so much.
'via Blog this'
I know, I know, Glenn Beck yadda yadda yadda crying crazypants. You're wrong, but that's another post. There is a woman who happens to be influential in the administration, Samantha Power, that promotes a concept called 'Responsibility To Protect.' 'Responsibility To Protect' means that the US and other nations/organizations must militarily intervene to stop genocides, ethnic cleansing and atrocities. She was the voice in the administration that started the ball moving on our military intervention in Libya, where we removed a cowed dictator in order to allow Islamists to take power while Obama broke the War Powers Act. The US has troops in Uganda as part of an effort to track down the warlord Kony as part of the Responsibility To Protect.
The idea of 'R2P' is a nice-sounding and feel-good one but there are real consequences. First off, when the World's Only Superpower steps in, we ironically lend credibility to our opponent. Much of the world hates us and, if we are against someone, much of the world feels the need to support the other guy. One of the reasons that the monster Castro is beloved on the left is that he has framed his utter failure in leading a nation as a fight against the cruel and evil US. North Korea has, for sixty years, declared themselves at total war with the US and explained to their people that the famines and concentration camps and the fact that each generation of North Korean is shorter than the previous one because of malnutrition are all necessary sacrifices to keep the US at bay. Tinpot dictators and warlords the world over will use the fact we are supporting their enemies as propaganda and a recruitment for anti-American terrorists the world over.
The second problem with 'R2P' is that we are no longer deciding where and when the US military is to go in. We are giving corrupt bureaucrats and misguided idealists and people that can make a good youtube video the power to declare war and letting them guide how we use our forces. We did that in the 1990s when we bombed Serbia and intervened militarily in Kosovo. We are still there. No, really, a generation later we are still there. Just like we're still in Western Europe protecting them against the Soviet Union that dissolved even before Kosovo. The 1990s also saw us get involved in the first Gulf War to protect non-democratic regimes from being attacked by another non-democratic regime (our military being stationed in Saudi Arabia is what sent Bin Laden against us, by the way) and the intervention in Somalia (where those pirates that attack from Egypt to India come from) which gave us 'Black Hawk Down'. The US military is designed to do one thing and one thing only: to smash other militaries to tiny bits very quickly and at almost no loss of US life. There is another thing the US military does very well, responding to natural disasters overseas and providing food/water/medical aid and security against looting but that is essentially moving our military to smash an enemy and giving them food instead. As Vietnam and Afghanistan and the two Gulf Wars and Kosovo and Somalia have shown, nation building is something very different and difficult and we have really achieved it twice, in Germany and Japan, and that was after we utterly smashed them to pieces and kept millions of military-age men in POW camps for years afterwards.
The third problem with 'R2P' is that we will be working with unreliable partners. Look at UN Peacekeeping forces and their record of child rape and forced prostitution. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have let terrorists set up ammo dumps and launch missiles at Israel for decades from mere yards away and done nothing except watch. They don't stop the terrorists or blow up the ammo dumps or even alert Israel that rockets are going to be incoming soon. Pakistan has provided intelligence, logistical support and protection for the Taliban in Afghanistan in addition to Bin Laden living a comfortable life in the town home to Pakistan's version of West Point. The Oil-For-Food program run by the UN provided millions of dollars in bribes for UN officials to allow Saddam to siphon tens of billions of dollars for his personal use as well as to rearm after the first Gulf War. The Libyan 'freedom fighters' that we supported included terrorists that have stolen thousands of surface-to-air missiles.
The fourth problem is that 'R2P' can be used against our allies. The article I'm linking to goes into detail about Power said, in 2002, that 'R2P' would lead to the US occupying Israel and pouring billions of dollars into Palestine. She saw that as a good thing. Putting US troops into that mess would not be in our best interests. The UN is openly anti-American and putting our military at their disposal is just a bad idea. Putting our military at their disposal with them writing the rules of engagement is even worse. It also goes against the Constitution where Congress declares war, not the UN or the President.
One of the problems with liberalism is that the goals are what matter, not the results. Conservatives are forced to look at their failures and examine why they failed. Liberals, not so much.
'via Blog this'
How Kalashnikov Guns Are Made | English Russia
How Kalashnikov Guns Are Made | English Russia:
One of the two things I am learning about blogging is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I see an article or think of something that I think can be a good post, make a note of it because it's going to take thirty minutes to two hours to do supporting research and write the post aaaaaaaaaaaand it never gets done. I've got forty bookmarks that were supposed to be posts that are gathering dust. I'm going to start doing quick posts and then go back later maybe and do a second post to cover the concept/article in depth. This is the first one of those stump posts.
The Kalashnikov or AK series of guns (the AK-47 is most famous but there's an AK-74 and other variants) are the preferred weapon of our enemies. In some parts of the world, they can be gotten for the price of a live chicken and they are as reliable as a hammer. I knew a guy who stored one in an outdoor locker off Lake Erie, forgot about it for the winter, and fired it normally after kicking the bolt back to loosen the rust. They've been dug out of graves in the Middle East and Eastern Europe where they were buried with the men using them before death, had the bolt moved to chamber a round and fired in auto. They aren't accurate by any stretch of the imagination but... they just work. The rifle was designed after World War Two in order to provide the Soviets and eventually anyone who was anti-US with a rifle perfect for illiterate peasants to use effectively. The plant in the post has made over fifty million AKs.
The US needed a decent rifle after the start of Vietnam- the one they were using, the M14, was a modified version of their WW2 rifle, the m1- and eventually chose the M16. The M16 is an ingenious system that allows for easily changing the caliber (I've even seen a M16 crossbow. No, really. It didn't reload itself but the crossbow replaced the barrel.) but is finicky and needs to be kept clean. The original version of the M16 was an utter failure in combat, to the point where a third to a half of the rifles would jam in a firefight and the Pentagon did its best to cover this up until the redesign. The civilian version, the AR, is very popular with hunters because it's accurate and can be easily converted to many other calibers. Maybe half of the zombies killed during the inevitable zombie apocalypse will be shot by AR rifles.
There was a phrase I mentioned earlier, that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the AK is a good example of this. It's utterly reliable, kills a human or zombie very well, and is cheap to produce. The rifle isn't as accurate as it could be and the bullets are a bit heavier than they absolutely need to be (a big deal if you're carrying several hundred into combat) but it just works. The US was looking for a perfect rifle, settled on a good one but has to lie to itself that it's perfect even now (many troops in Afghanistan are carrying backup AKs that they are forced to hide from their superiors). We'll get more in the perfect being the enemy of the good later.
'via Blog this'
One of the two things I am learning about blogging is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I see an article or think of something that I think can be a good post, make a note of it because it's going to take thirty minutes to two hours to do supporting research and write the post aaaaaaaaaaaand it never gets done. I've got forty bookmarks that were supposed to be posts that are gathering dust. I'm going to start doing quick posts and then go back later maybe and do a second post to cover the concept/article in depth. This is the first one of those stump posts.
The Kalashnikov or AK series of guns (the AK-47 is most famous but there's an AK-74 and other variants) are the preferred weapon of our enemies. In some parts of the world, they can be gotten for the price of a live chicken and they are as reliable as a hammer. I knew a guy who stored one in an outdoor locker off Lake Erie, forgot about it for the winter, and fired it normally after kicking the bolt back to loosen the rust. They've been dug out of graves in the Middle East and Eastern Europe where they were buried with the men using them before death, had the bolt moved to chamber a round and fired in auto. They aren't accurate by any stretch of the imagination but... they just work. The rifle was designed after World War Two in order to provide the Soviets and eventually anyone who was anti-US with a rifle perfect for illiterate peasants to use effectively. The plant in the post has made over fifty million AKs.
The US needed a decent rifle after the start of Vietnam- the one they were using, the M14, was a modified version of their WW2 rifle, the m1- and eventually chose the M16. The M16 is an ingenious system that allows for easily changing the caliber (I've even seen a M16 crossbow. No, really. It didn't reload itself but the crossbow replaced the barrel.) but is finicky and needs to be kept clean. The original version of the M16 was an utter failure in combat, to the point where a third to a half of the rifles would jam in a firefight and the Pentagon did its best to cover this up until the redesign. The civilian version, the AR, is very popular with hunters because it's accurate and can be easily converted to many other calibers. Maybe half of the zombies killed during the inevitable zombie apocalypse will be shot by AR rifles.
There was a phrase I mentioned earlier, that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the AK is a good example of this. It's utterly reliable, kills a human or zombie very well, and is cheap to produce. The rifle isn't as accurate as it could be and the bullets are a bit heavier than they absolutely need to be (a big deal if you're carrying several hundred into combat) but it just works. The US was looking for a perfect rifle, settled on a good one but has to lie to itself that it's perfect even now (many troops in Afghanistan are carrying backup AKs that they are forced to hide from their superiors). We'll get more in the perfect being the enemy of the good later.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Obama and the Birther Movement
I was looking at a news site and there was a link to an article saying that a lawyer has admitted that Obama's birth certificate was faked. My first instinct was to roll my eyes but I think it might be of interest to explain why the Birthers believe what they do and why they are morons. By Birther, I refer to those that think Obama was not born in Hawaii as well as those who are 'just asking questions' because we all know they really mean they think the birth certificate was faked but don't want to look like morons. There are some that believe that Obama was born in Hawaii but his birth certificate has been modified or the original contained embarrassing details he is hiding. Others believe that he was not born in the US (Kenya is the usual theoretical country of birth but I've seen the Soviet Union in a few theories). All of them are Birthers and believe Obama is not eligible to be President.
To be a Birther, one must ignore the fact that Obama's mother was an American citizen and therefore Obama has American citizenship through her. Whether he was born in Hawaii, Kenya or on Mars, he gets citizenship from his mother. Birthers get around this by saying that the law at the time said the American parent of a child born outside the US had to be over the age of 21, but this goes against the Naturalization Act of 1790 which has no age limit for the parent.
Birthers usually state that Obama's father wanted his son to have Kenyan citizenship. Obama's father, who was a Kenyan bureaucrat for decades, never filled out the paperwork to get his son Kenyan citizenship. It should be noted that there's no Kenyan birth certificate for Obama so his father would have had to had the delivery outside a hospital and had no doctor or nurse attending and he would also had to not bother to report his son's birth.
A few days before Obama released a picture of his birth certificate, I came up with what I think is an ironclad proof that Obama and his parents couldn't have gone from Hawaii to Kenya and back in the few days no one saw them before the delivery. Passenger jet travel was still relatively new at the time and very expensive, too expensive for a college student and a teenager to afford on their own. There wouldn't have been direct flights from Hawaii to Kenya and the connecting flights would have involved long wait times, stretching flight time to beyond the few days no one say his parents. Customs for the layovers would have records of his parents' trip. Even an infant needs a passport, so Obama couldn't have gotten back into the US without proper documents. All of this travelling would have involved a nine-months-pregnant woman back when pregnant women were treated as if they were made out of spun glass. Even decades later, people would remember an about-to-give-birth white girl and an African man travelling together. The trip wasn't physically or financially possible in the time frame, Obama's father would have had to go out of his way not to leave a paper trail in Kenya, there would be an international paper trail and certainly problems returning to the US with a newborn.
In addition to my points above, there's the fact that there is hospital paperwork and a birth notice in the paper. So we have:
- His mother was a US citizen, so he was automatically one as well (the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the Fourteenth Amendment).
- There's no Kenyan paperwork or birth certificate.
- The parents couldn't have afforded the trip.
- There wasn't time to fly to Kenya, give birth and come back before their disappearance was noticed.
- Pregnancy doesn't give one a exact delivery time. There's no way to predict the time of birth closely enough to fly to Kenya and back.
- There are hospital records and a birth notice in a local newspaper showing a US birth.
Birthers, when presented with facts such as these, will shift focus to the fact that the Obama campaign didn't release the relevant paperwork during the 2008 election. Some will point out that John McCain had to prove he was an American citizen (his mother was actually interviewed to verify his citizenship) and it is true that the Hillary Clinton campaign did float the idea that McCain wasn't an American citizen because he was born on a US naval base in the Panama Canal Zone back when the US owned the canal. One of the things that drives the Birther movement is the outrage that a Republican war hero has to prove his citizenship but a Democrat with a foreigner for a father doesn't.
The Obama campaign was pretty savvy to use the Birther movement to make their opponents look like tin-foil-wearing morons. Several times in the first two years of his presidency, Obama's people made jokes about the Birthers or friendly news outlets would bring up Birthers when the Tea Party movement was gathering strength. After the 2010 election, Obama's close friend, who just happened to be governor of Hawaii, suddenly announced that he was going to stop these Birthers and release Obama's long-form birth certificate. For almost two weeks, his people were releasing odder and odder reports, from finding it to losing it to firing the Hawaii Secretary of State (who was in charge of keeping birth certificates, among other things) for an unknown reason and then finally admitting what many of us knew all along, that it couldn't be released without Obama's written approval. This circus managed to crowd out stories about how the Democrats had the greatest loss of Congressional seats since 1938 and they had lost the House.
Obama finally allowed a picture of the long-form birth certificate to be released after Trump had been ranting about it for a few weeks. Trump, who was trying to use the issue to make himself a Republican presidential candidate, saw interest in his political future quickly fade away. Recently, Joe Arpaio, a controversial Arizona sheriff under Federal investigation for racial bias and civil rights violations, has decided to investigate Obama's birth certificate because...? Arpaio has been marketing himself as 'America's Toughest Sheriff' for decades and is known for stunts like putting a 'Vacancy' sign in front of his jail, making the male inmates wear pink underwear and so on. He's also been fighting county government officials and judges for money and power to the point where it's a pretty ugly mess.
I think the appeal of the Birther movement is that of the Magic Reset Button. Liberals held onto the belief that Bush stole the 2000 election in the hope that some smoking gun would be found and he would be removed from office (they never seemed to realize that, if W was removed, Cheney would take over). Republicans had their Magic Reset Button in the 1990s with Whitewater and Zippergate. The 9/11 Truther movement (that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job or the government knew about them and failed to act) is a more recent one that seems to cut across political leanings. The Magic Reset Button has been around for well over a century- really, the Civil War, it could be argued, was the result of the South pushing the Magic Reset Button under the belief that the Founders simply forgot to include how to leave the US somewhere in the Constitution. The Magic Reset Button, if pushed, will right massive wrongs and make horrible things not happen. If Obama isn't an American, he will be removed from office (and Joe Biden would become president, something no one wants) and every decision he made will be reversed (actually, there would be a Constitutional crisis worse than anything since the Civil War) and...? Magic Reset Buttons aren't real but their appeal is simple and childlike, that the bad thing will go away. The Truthers are hoping that there are millions of Islamic fundamentalists dedicated to destroying us. The anti-Clinton-ers of the 1990s were hoping that history would stop with the fall of the Soviet Union and we'd be able to go back to a 1950s that never was or a Gilded Age where we could ignore the rest of the world.
The truth of the matter is that Obama is the legitimate President of the United States. I feel he's a horrible one, one that shares few beliefs with me or the majority of America. He lies constantly, is petulant and arrogant and refuses to look at any other viewpoint. He's skated on his looks and voice and personal narrative and now that he has the hardest job on the planet, he votes 'Present' and goes off to golf. There is no Magic Reset Button.
'Lilyhammer' -or- Sopranos in Scandanavia
Netflix is starting to make its own content and the first I've watched is 'Lilyhammer'. A Mob underboss played by Steven Van Sant rats on his boss and is relocated to Lilyhammer, Norway because he liked the Olympics in 1994. No, really. So he's trying to get used to Norway and his Mob tendencies are showing and the local police think he's a Muslim terrorist (no, really). I've watched four episodes so far and it's a great show. Van Sant is great and the Norwegian actors are all good to great. It's funny without having gags and Norway seems to be a cross between Ikea and the DMV. European socialism is not a favorite of mine and there are moments here and there that show the difference between the US and the rest of the world but it doesn't preach either way. It's worth a look if you have Netflix.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
"True But False" -or- Media Beclowns Self In Pro-Obama Bias
Are Obama’s job policies hurting women? - The Washington Post:
Obama has been talking about a War on Women the GOP is supposedly fighting (mostly because Republicans aren't trying to destroy the First Amendment) and the GOP is responding (!) with facts. Of the 740,000 jobs lost since Obama took office, 683,000 of them were held by women. -GOP
There are a few 'fact checker' columns or sites the media promotes and they usually have a strong bias for Democrats and a strong bias against conservatives and the GOP. This fact-checking is done by the Washington Post, one of the top newspapers in America. The fact above is true: the economy is still under 740,000 jobs* since Obama took office and there are 683,000 fewer employed women. The administration's figures are used for this fact. It's a bad fact for Obama to deal with, that his failed policies have been especially hard on women. So how does the Washington Post rate this official government statistic?
True But False.
Huh? Well, sure, the facts are true and the statistics are official government ones. But the GOP started the job-counting at the beginning of Obama's presidency, not when the stimulus that didn't work happened. They then compare apples and oranges or 'number of jobs total' with 'number of jobs created during the Obama administration, whether or not they were temporary.' So, yes, the GOP is correct but, if you look at something else, something the GOP didn't claim, the thing the GOP didn't claim would have been false if they had claimed it but they didn't. But if they had, it would have been wrong. So they lied about something they didn't say or imply but aren't wrong about the thing they said. So the Washington Post is Biased but Beclowned.
* I might make this into a whole post, but the Obama administration doesn't count unemployed people as unemployed. See, they count U-6 as unemployed. What's U-6? People that have been unemployed for under six months and are getting state unemployment. Obama started giving people unemployed over six months federal unemployment. You might remember charges in 2010-2011 that the GOP was going to cut benefits for the unemployed, but that was just the administration extending unemployment from six months to two years. People unemployed for between six months and two years don't count on the official unemployment register. After two years, when they lose their unemployment? They don't count as unemployed, either, but as people not participating in the job market. The raw number of people working in the US is lower than at any time since the Reagan administration when the population was 25% less. This is a huge deal because we've managed to lose thirty years worth of jobs. I'll have to make this a major post sometime soon because it's a huge deal.
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Obama has been talking about a War on Women the GOP is supposedly fighting (mostly because Republicans aren't trying to destroy the First Amendment) and the GOP is responding (!) with facts. Of the 740,000 jobs lost since Obama took office, 683,000 of them were held by women. -GOP
There are a few 'fact checker' columns or sites the media promotes and they usually have a strong bias for Democrats and a strong bias against conservatives and the GOP. This fact-checking is done by the Washington Post, one of the top newspapers in America. The fact above is true: the economy is still under 740,000 jobs* since Obama took office and there are 683,000 fewer employed women. The administration's figures are used for this fact. It's a bad fact for Obama to deal with, that his failed policies have been especially hard on women. So how does the Washington Post rate this official government statistic?
True But False.
Huh? Well, sure, the facts are true and the statistics are official government ones. But the GOP started the job-counting at the beginning of Obama's presidency, not when the stimulus that didn't work happened. They then compare apples and oranges or 'number of jobs total' with 'number of jobs created during the Obama administration, whether or not they were temporary.' So, yes, the GOP is correct but, if you look at something else, something the GOP didn't claim, the thing the GOP didn't claim would have been false if they had claimed it but they didn't. But if they had, it would have been wrong. So they lied about something they didn't say or imply but aren't wrong about the thing they said. So the Washington Post is Biased but Beclowned.
* I might make this into a whole post, but the Obama administration doesn't count unemployed people as unemployed. See, they count U-6 as unemployed. What's U-6? People that have been unemployed for under six months and are getting state unemployment. Obama started giving people unemployed over six months federal unemployment. You might remember charges in 2010-2011 that the GOP was going to cut benefits for the unemployed, but that was just the administration extending unemployment from six months to two years. People unemployed for between six months and two years don't count on the official unemployment register. After two years, when they lose their unemployment? They don't count as unemployed, either, but as people not participating in the job market. The raw number of people working in the US is lower than at any time since the Reagan administration when the population was 25% less. This is a huge deal because we've managed to lose thirty years worth of jobs. I'll have to make this a major post sometime soon because it's a huge deal.
'via Blog this'
Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her ‘Puffy’ Appearance - The Daily Beast
Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her ‘Puffy’ Appearance - The Daily Beast:
There was an article on Ace of Spades about this article where Ashley Judd blames 'the patriarchy' for gossip about her puffy face. The articles touch on the differences between men and women/feminism/anti-male bias and I wanted to talk about it.
Ashley Judd is a very good actress who's on a TV series I've never heard of and done a lot of movies. As of late, there's been a lot of articles on gossip sites about her appearance, from her having a puffy fact to having gained some weight. This has bothered her and she wants to shift 'The Conversation' (that's what she calls it, caps included) to how 'The Patriarchy' (her title/caps) is pushing this and why. It turns out that The Patriarchy is making snarky comments about women to destroy feminism and keep women down. She wants women to band together to ask The Patriarchy why they do this and make them stop because women should be united rather than divided due to snarky comments.
What a load of crap. Men, straight men at least*, don't read gossip magazines and don't watch gossip TV shows like Access ET Hollywood TMZ Edition. We don't gossip among ourselves and don't care about celebrity gossip unless it involves naked pictures. There's a blogger that regularly uses search terms for the most recent naked celebrity to increase his Google ranking (for a few celebrities, their name and naked pictures will reveal his blog as the first result). This is an aspect of how men and women deal with anger or social hierarchy differently. Men's anger tends to be acute and women's anger tends to be chronic. What I mean by this is that when men get angry at each other, there'll be an argument, possibly a shoving match and then they will either stop being friends or be okay with each other. Women tend to be more passive aggressive and will talk behind each other's backs and make snarky comments and gossip far beyond the capacity of a man to care about. An experience common to men in relationships is going home from a party and hearing all about a woman his girlfriend/wife hates and is jealous of. We're confused and a little bored but agree because we don't want that anger turned on us.
In the greater mediasphere, women and gay men** dominate the gossip agenda. They are the snarky ones talking about women's bodies and aging and weight and clothes and makeup and things we straight guys don't even know how to describe. Straight men's gossip is centered on whether we'd do her or not (the answer is usually yes). Beyond the gossip, you see women's magazines center on how women need to improve their hair/skin/makeup/body/fashion sense/bedroom skills/seductive skills. Guys aren't writing or editing those articles. We don't care. All of this reflects the importance that women place on their relative position in their social circles. Women are constantly evaluating their rank in the looks/fashion/financial/romance arenas and trying to talk down those they view as higher in the rankings. I'm not saying this is evil or maladaptive but it isn't straight guys that are doing it.
Here's a thought experiment; watch several hours of sitcoms and their commercials and count how many times the man in a couple is incompetent/mistaken/clueless and how often the woman is. Tim Allen made a career of being the grunting moron who, at the end of the episode, learned another Important Lesson about how to be less like a straight guy. If there was a Patriarchy, why would men allow themselves to almost always be the fool? If The Patriarchy is trying to keep women stupid, why would they allow women to graduate from college at a 3:2 ratio? Boys are less than half the population but more than 80% of children on Ritalin are boys. Why would divorce laws favor women if there was a Patriarchy in control?
I don't care about Ashley Judd's face, puffy or not, but to her I'm still sexist because I'm a man. She wasn't complaining about a Patriarchy promoting cute young things when she was a cute young thing. I doubt she's living on Ramen and rice. She grabbed the brass ring, got it, and now is complaining because it's not gold.
And for what it's worth, I saw a recent photo of her and I don't think her face is oddly puffy.
* Before you can start on a 'OMG homophobe!!!1!!!one!!!!' tirade, here are my bona-fides: two gay roommates, a friend that was a drag queen (I'd go to his competitions to cheer him on and be the only straight guy in a sea of drunk and horny gay men) and had a friend that was a transsexual. Not a homophobe.
** Perez Hilton. Look at a few sites and shows and you'll see I'm right.
'via Blog this'
There was an article on Ace of Spades about this article where Ashley Judd blames 'the patriarchy' for gossip about her puffy face. The articles touch on the differences between men and women/feminism/anti-male bias and I wanted to talk about it.
Ashley Judd is a very good actress who's on a TV series I've never heard of and done a lot of movies. As of late, there's been a lot of articles on gossip sites about her appearance, from her having a puffy fact to having gained some weight. This has bothered her and she wants to shift 'The Conversation' (that's what she calls it, caps included) to how 'The Patriarchy' (her title/caps) is pushing this and why. It turns out that The Patriarchy is making snarky comments about women to destroy feminism and keep women down. She wants women to band together to ask The Patriarchy why they do this and make them stop because women should be united rather than divided due to snarky comments.
What a load of crap. Men, straight men at least*, don't read gossip magazines and don't watch gossip TV shows like Access ET Hollywood TMZ Edition. We don't gossip among ourselves and don't care about celebrity gossip unless it involves naked pictures. There's a blogger that regularly uses search terms for the most recent naked celebrity to increase his Google ranking (for a few celebrities, their name and naked pictures will reveal his blog as the first result). This is an aspect of how men and women deal with anger or social hierarchy differently. Men's anger tends to be acute and women's anger tends to be chronic. What I mean by this is that when men get angry at each other, there'll be an argument, possibly a shoving match and then they will either stop being friends or be okay with each other. Women tend to be more passive aggressive and will talk behind each other's backs and make snarky comments and gossip far beyond the capacity of a man to care about. An experience common to men in relationships is going home from a party and hearing all about a woman his girlfriend/wife hates and is jealous of. We're confused and a little bored but agree because we don't want that anger turned on us.
In the greater mediasphere, women and gay men** dominate the gossip agenda. They are the snarky ones talking about women's bodies and aging and weight and clothes and makeup and things we straight guys don't even know how to describe. Straight men's gossip is centered on whether we'd do her or not (the answer is usually yes). Beyond the gossip, you see women's magazines center on how women need to improve their hair/skin/makeup/body/fashion sense/bedroom skills/seductive skills. Guys aren't writing or editing those articles. We don't care. All of this reflects the importance that women place on their relative position in their social circles. Women are constantly evaluating their rank in the looks/fashion/financial/romance arenas and trying to talk down those they view as higher in the rankings. I'm not saying this is evil or maladaptive but it isn't straight guys that are doing it.
Here's a thought experiment; watch several hours of sitcoms and their commercials and count how many times the man in a couple is incompetent/mistaken/clueless and how often the woman is. Tim Allen made a career of being the grunting moron who, at the end of the episode, learned another Important Lesson about how to be less like a straight guy. If there was a Patriarchy, why would men allow themselves to almost always be the fool? If The Patriarchy is trying to keep women stupid, why would they allow women to graduate from college at a 3:2 ratio? Boys are less than half the population but more than 80% of children on Ritalin are boys. Why would divorce laws favor women if there was a Patriarchy in control?
I don't care about Ashley Judd's face, puffy or not, but to her I'm still sexist because I'm a man. She wasn't complaining about a Patriarchy promoting cute young things when she was a cute young thing. I doubt she's living on Ramen and rice. She grabbed the brass ring, got it, and now is complaining because it's not gold.
And for what it's worth, I saw a recent photo of her and I don't think her face is oddly puffy.
* Before you can start on a 'OMG homophobe!!!1!!!one!!!!' tirade, here are my bona-fides: two gay roommates, a friend that was a drag queen (I'd go to his competitions to cheer him on and be the only straight guy in a sea of drunk and horny gay men) and had a friend that was a transsexual. Not a homophobe.
** Perez Hilton. Look at a few sites and shows and you'll see I'm right.
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Wait... What?
I'm not a fan of Obama. I think he's arrogant, vain, narcissistic, intellectually weak, duplicitous, mean-spirited and ruthless. His supporters say he is the most intelligent President ever. He has continually put himself in the top four or five Presidents when asked to rate himself. He was head of the Harvard Law Review (except he never wrote an article and didn't do any of the day-to-day running of the Review that normally comes with the job) and taught Constitutional law, except he didn't write any articles or conduct research and none of his students seem to remember anything about his classes. He's been trying to bully the Supreme Court to not throw out Obamacare by speaking out in public. Obama, the Constitutional scholar and smartest President ever said that the Supreme Court had never ruled a law unconstitutional and thrown it out. Except it has, because the job of the Supreme Court is to rule whether a law is or isn't Constitutional. It has in fact rules over three thousand laws unconstitutional since Marbury v Madison, something I learned in eighth grade.
After even the most in-the-tank journalist felt compelled to point this out, Obama explained himself. “First of all, let me be very specific,” Obama said. “We have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce, a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner, so we’re going back to the thirties, pre New Deal.”
Turns out that, besides being wrong, Obama, Constitutional Expert, mentioned a court case, 'Lochner v New York'. The 'New York' part means the case was filed against the state of New York. Why? Because the state of New York passed a law that the plaintiff felt, correctly, was unconstitutional. Congress didn't pass the law. So Obama, the smartest everything in the history of everything, doesn't know that the Supreme Court can rule on local or state laws as well as federal and doesn't know that the Court can strike down laws that are unconstitutional.
One of the problems liberals have is that they are almost never challenged. They control the media and the universities and government bureaucracies and since the media repeats the lie that anyone that disagrees with them must, must be evil and/or stupid, they come to think that they are always right and there is no other valid viewpoint. Reporters covering the Obamacare case last week were stunned, utterly stunned at the power of the questions the conservatives asked. The solicitor general stumbled and stuttered and was openly laughed at, even by the liberals. For two years, the administration has argued that the penalty for not having insurance is and isn't a tax at the same time. One of the justices called the solicitor general on it, pointing out that he wasn't able to keep it straight in the answer to a single question. Obama is furious that people disagree with him and he's even more furious that their opinion matters.
After even the most in-the-tank journalist felt compelled to point this out, Obama explained himself. “First of all, let me be very specific,” Obama said. “We have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce, a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner, so we’re going back to the thirties, pre New Deal.”
Turns out that, besides being wrong, Obama, Constitutional Expert, mentioned a court case, 'Lochner v New York'. The 'New York' part means the case was filed against the state of New York. Why? Because the state of New York passed a law that the plaintiff felt, correctly, was unconstitutional. Congress didn't pass the law. So Obama, the smartest everything in the history of everything, doesn't know that the Supreme Court can rule on local or state laws as well as federal and doesn't know that the Court can strike down laws that are unconstitutional.
One of the problems liberals have is that they are almost never challenged. They control the media and the universities and government bureaucracies and since the media repeats the lie that anyone that disagrees with them must, must be evil and/or stupid, they come to think that they are always right and there is no other valid viewpoint. Reporters covering the Obamacare case last week were stunned, utterly stunned at the power of the questions the conservatives asked. The solicitor general stumbled and stuttered and was openly laughed at, even by the liberals. For two years, the administration has argued that the penalty for not having insurance is and isn't a tax at the same time. One of the justices called the solicitor general on it, pointing out that he wasn't able to keep it straight in the answer to a single question. Obama is furious that people disagree with him and he's even more furious that their opinion matters.
It's NOT the JETPACK I was PROMISED, but it's a good start.
Manufacturers Bring Flying Cars Closer to Reality With Prototypes | Video | TheBlaze.com:
There are two different 'flying car' prototypes in the article with a video for each. People have been playing around with the idea since the 1930s with little progress. What people want is a car that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane. This is pretty much impossible because you have to carry around the car parts when you fly and you don't have the space for enough rotor/prop to create lift. Most flying cars have been cars that bolted into a wings-and-tail assembly. You end up with a crappy car and a crappy plane. It's far, far cheaper and safer to have a car waiting at the destination you fly to.
The first one is a car/plane that has the folded wings on the side of the car. If someone hits you in a parking lot, your $287,000 flying car can be ruined. The second one is an autogyro. It has a rotor instead of wings but can't take off vertically (there are two videos I've seen for it and neither show this, making you believe it's capable of vertical takeoff and landing). The autogyro itself looks like a good design and would be my choice for insanely expensive flying-car monstrosity. The company is marketing the autogyro for police and doctors working in an island-hopping practice. I'd want to see takeoff and landing footage before I decided it was practical.
It is NOT, however, a jetpack. Keep working.
'via Blog this'
There are two different 'flying car' prototypes in the article with a video for each. People have been playing around with the idea since the 1930s with little progress. What people want is a car that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane. This is pretty much impossible because you have to carry around the car parts when you fly and you don't have the space for enough rotor/prop to create lift. Most flying cars have been cars that bolted into a wings-and-tail assembly. You end up with a crappy car and a crappy plane. It's far, far cheaper and safer to have a car waiting at the destination you fly to.
The first one is a car/plane that has the folded wings on the side of the car. If someone hits you in a parking lot, your $287,000 flying car can be ruined. The second one is an autogyro. It has a rotor instead of wings but can't take off vertically (there are two videos I've seen for it and neither show this, making you believe it's capable of vertical takeoff and landing). The autogyro itself looks like a good design and would be my choice for insanely expensive flying-car monstrosity. The company is marketing the autogyro for police and doctors working in an island-hopping practice. I'd want to see takeoff and landing footage before I decided it was practical.
It is NOT, however, a jetpack. Keep working.
'via Blog this'
Monday, April 2, 2012
We're Doomed! No, Wait.....
Global Warming. No, wait, it's Anthropomorphic Climate Change. No, wait, it's Climate Weirding. When it's hot, it's because of climate change. When it's cold, it's because climate change caused changes in weather patterns. If you don't agree that 1) the planet is heating to death and 2) it's all humanity's fault and 3) we have five years to save the planet, you are a climate change 'denier'. As in 'holocaust denier'. You hate science and polar bears and puppies and sunshine and are ignorant.
Except it's not true. Nope. Let me explain.
I was a little kid when Star Wars came out and I loved it. My parents were good parents and used this as a way to get me interested in science. They bought me a telescope and some science textbooks (that I read for fun; yes, I am a geek) and took me to planetarium shows. If you've never taken a kid to a planetarium show, you really should. It will blow their mind. Anyway, a few of the planetarium shows talked about global cooling and how air pollution, specifically sulfur compounds in it, was going to cause a global ice age. The solution was to close power plants and factories and set up an international unelected bureaucracy with massive powers to regulate up to the point of limiting the number of children people could have. This was a theme carried over from a doomsday scenario from the late 60s and early 70s called the 'population bomb' claiming that there was overpopulation to the point that hundreds of millions of people were going to start starving to death in about five to ten years. The solution was to set up a massive international unelected bureaucracy with the power to regulate up to the point of limiting the number of children people could have. Several years later, temperatures changed and we were told about acid rain (primarily caused by air pollution, specifically sulfur compounds and carbon dioxide) and how it was going to kill plant and animal life and kill the oceans. After that, it was the destruction of the rainforests and then Global Warming.
Global Warming has been happening since... fifteen minutes after people stopped laughing over the global cooling hoax. The causes are the same, the solutions are the same, the people involved are the same and the time frame for massive action is always five to ten years. Global warming OF LESS THAN A DEGREE stopped in 1998 but warmists can't ever seem to mention that. They also can't seem to mention that there were similar rises and lowering of the temperatures of Mars and Venus and Jupiter, almost like the sun fluctuates in the amount of energy it releases. Al Gore (he speaks for the trees) won an Oscar for his documentary that ignored inconvenient facts like
Except it's not true. Nope. Let me explain.
I was a little kid when Star Wars came out and I loved it. My parents were good parents and used this as a way to get me interested in science. They bought me a telescope and some science textbooks (that I read for fun; yes, I am a geek) and took me to planetarium shows. If you've never taken a kid to a planetarium show, you really should. It will blow their mind. Anyway, a few of the planetarium shows talked about global cooling and how air pollution, specifically sulfur compounds in it, was going to cause a global ice age. The solution was to close power plants and factories and set up an international unelected bureaucracy with massive powers to regulate up to the point of limiting the number of children people could have. This was a theme carried over from a doomsday scenario from the late 60s and early 70s called the 'population bomb' claiming that there was overpopulation to the point that hundreds of millions of people were going to start starving to death in about five to ten years. The solution was to set up a massive international unelected bureaucracy with the power to regulate up to the point of limiting the number of children people could have. Several years later, temperatures changed and we were told about acid rain (primarily caused by air pollution, specifically sulfur compounds and carbon dioxide) and how it was going to kill plant and animal life and kill the oceans. After that, it was the destruction of the rainforests and then Global Warming.
Global Warming has been happening since... fifteen minutes after people stopped laughing over the global cooling hoax. The causes are the same, the solutions are the same, the people involved are the same and the time frame for massive action is always five to ten years. Global warming OF LESS THAN A DEGREE stopped in 1998 but warmists can't ever seem to mention that. They also can't seem to mention that there were similar rises and lowering of the temperatures of Mars and Venus and Jupiter, almost like the sun fluctuates in the amount of energy it releases. Al Gore (he speaks for the trees) won an Oscar for his documentary that ignored inconvenient facts like
- Climatologists say we were in what they call the 'Little Ice Age' until the 18th century.
- There have been many periods of time where the temperature was higher than it is now, such as the Roman Warming Period and the Medieval Warming Period. Gore's film ignored these because they invalidate his theory.
- There were ice ages when CO2 levels were higher than now.
- Carbon Dioxide levels and temperature levels do appear to be linked. The problem is, temperature levels change and the carbon dioxide levels change TWO YEARS LATER. Yes, temperature levels change and CO2 levels respond. CO2 levels don't drive temperature levels.
- All of the warmist predictions are based on computer models that don't work. If they were predictive, you would be able to take a period in the past, plug the data into the model and check your results with the actual data. The models don't do this. It's junk science.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
I was promised a jetpack. I WAS PROMISED A JETPACK!
When I was a kid, I was told the future would be full of wonders, from moon bases to jetpacks to robots walking my dog for me. Somewhere along the way, that future was taken away from us and replaced with one where we must be politically and ecologically and verbally and sexually and bio-psycho-socially correct, one where your intentions matter more than your actions and sensitivity means 'do what we say'. The jetpack is to be replaced with the high-speed train that shall take us from where they put us to where they want us to go. America can't put an astronaut into space. The Japanese have any number of robots that can walk a dog but we have invisible fences and it's good exercise, anyway, so the future gets a pass on that one.
My parents taught me to read when I was three, took me to get my first library card when I was six and made sure I read all the dangerous things; Orwell and history and good science fiction and Dickens and Twain. Ever since I was a kid, I've had problems with insomnia so there was always the History Channel (back when they had history on it) and Discovery and A&E and Carlin on HBO. All of it taught me to look for patterns and connections, to look at things from an angle and not to trust authority. One of the reasons I think global warming is a hoax is because I remember going to planetariums in the 1970s and 80s (I loved Star Wars so my dad used it to get me interested in science) and hearing about 'global cooling'. I had a sixth-grade teacher that made us watch the news ever night and I noticed how the media would pick a story and push it from the same angle until a new story came along and that major stories (drugs/AIDS/acid rain/nuclear disarmament or freeze/some other 80s problem) were 'popular' for three months or so and would give way to the new major problem.
I grew up as politically correct and liberal as could be, was properly cynical and probably insufferable until life and experience ground down the sharp edges. Time passed and my politics changed from liberal to moderate to 9/11 Republican to conservative. Underneath, though, there was the kid who wanted his jetpack. This blog is going to be a combination of musing on the day's events and political rants and essays about whatever comes to mind. It's also going to be a reminder about that jetpack. I was promised a jetpack, after all. Where is it?
My parents taught me to read when I was three, took me to get my first library card when I was six and made sure I read all the dangerous things; Orwell and history and good science fiction and Dickens and Twain. Ever since I was a kid, I've had problems with insomnia so there was always the History Channel (back when they had history on it) and Discovery and A&E and Carlin on HBO. All of it taught me to look for patterns and connections, to look at things from an angle and not to trust authority. One of the reasons I think global warming is a hoax is because I remember going to planetariums in the 1970s and 80s (I loved Star Wars so my dad used it to get me interested in science) and hearing about 'global cooling'. I had a sixth-grade teacher that made us watch the news ever night and I noticed how the media would pick a story and push it from the same angle until a new story came along and that major stories (drugs/AIDS/acid rain/nuclear disarmament or freeze/some other 80s problem) were 'popular' for three months or so and would give way to the new major problem.
I grew up as politically correct and liberal as could be, was properly cynical and probably insufferable until life and experience ground down the sharp edges. Time passed and my politics changed from liberal to moderate to 9/11 Republican to conservative. Underneath, though, there was the kid who wanted his jetpack. This blog is going to be a combination of musing on the day's events and political rants and essays about whatever comes to mind. It's also going to be a reminder about that jetpack. I was promised a jetpack, after all. Where is it?
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